I was thinking it was more of a unit of stupid thoughts, the old unit of stupid mendacious ideas, The Palin , has been rendered almost too small to be used due to hyper inflation in stupidity, so we now have to use the Gohmert at an exchange rate of 78,932 Palins to the Gohmert.
So one Gohmert = approx. 80 kPalin at current exchange rates, or one Palin = approx. 1/80 𝝁Gohmert.
Nitpick: 12.5 𝝁Gohmert.
Oops. I think I meant 1 Palin approx. = 1/80 milliGohmert. So you’re right, 12.5 𝝁Gohmert. Good thing I’m not a rocket scientist. That’s a significant kiloNitpick there!
So today Governor Abbott followed through with this threat to veto the entire budget for the state legislature for the next two years. This goes well beyond denying “do-nothing” legislators their fat-cat salaries (all of $600 a month and a per-diem). It denies legislators funding for staff and offices necessary to do their basic work. It defunds legislative agencies like the state auditor and legislative budget board that do important work. And it’s all as “punishment” for House Democrats refusing to bow down and pass the voting restrictions he demanded.
What’s happening in Texas right now is nothing less than a coup. There’s no other term for one branch of government denying another it’s basic ability to function. Abbott has been accreting power for years now, ignoring limitation on his authority when he finds them inconvenient. The Legislature has let him get away with it, and I guess he’s decided he doesn’t even need the appearance of being answerable to the Legislature.
I wonder where the Death Star is.
Apparently the Texas power grid has been modifying the settings in people’s air conditioning remotely.
First, fuck Texas.
Second… Uhhh, almost 80 degrees? My thermostat is set for 78. I mean, I’d prefer it to be colder than that, personally, but that’s not exactly life-threatening temperatures…
Sounds like a hack, either to run up energy bills or to prevent ACs from cycling on.
They signed up for some kind of energy saver program. The Ecobee thermostat have has a permanent notification dot because it wants me to do the same thing and I keep telling it no.
Summers I keep the setpoint at 80 anyway.
’ I did not think that signing a contract that allowed my power company to remotely access my thermostat meant my power company could and would remotely access my thermostat in the middle of a power shortage!
THANKS OBAMA BIDEN!!!’
Apparently they signed up for some contest, and this clause giving remote access was in the rules somewhere.
Oops. Did not imply they knew they were signing up. It was probably buried in the contest rules or EULA somewhere. What I meant was it wasn’t somebody hacking into their thermostat but rather they did it to themselves.
For how much the love to hurl the term themselves, it never ceases to amaze me what fragile snowflakes Republicans are. The Texas Repbulican leadership forced the Texas state history museum to cancel a promotional event for a book that challenges conventional narratives about the Battle of the Alamo. Particularly, the book apparently highlights the role that slavery (and Mexico’s abolition of it) played in the Texas War for Independence. This comes as our Governor is once again railing against “critical race theory” and planning to call the Legislature back into session to ban it, even though the Legislature just passed legislation to do so a month ago.
I don’t know anything about this book, and maybe it’s crap. But it’s a testament to what Republicans really think of their weak-minded voters that they fear that exposure to a contrary point of view will undermine the carefully formed narratives that they prefer.
I just read the book (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford). It’s great, if a little too “familiar” and rife with phrases and references that will be forgotten in a decade*, but its history and research appears to be solid. I can see the Repubs becoming irate at its challenge to the accepted narrative and hero-worship. One thing I hadn’t realized was the extent to which folks of hispanic background loathe the Alamo-worship. Understandable, since they’re cast as the “bad guys”
- like I’m a fine one to talk.
Heh, as a person who had to take a lot of Texas history, I don’t feel that there were any “good guys” in that war. Santa Anna wasn’t going to war to enforce the Mexican’s constitutional prohibition against slavery, he was putting down one of several rebellions that generally arose from him grabbing power.
I can understand how Mexican-Americans can feel they’re portrayed as the “bad guys” in US media on the Alamo. As the SD columns cited by @squeegee point out, most of the popular portrayals are fantasy, anyway. Even if the republicans are whining about Forget the Alamo, they’d probably whine about the textbooks that are already in use if they’d paid attention.
But, my co-workers in Mexico City generally laugh and talk with me about history if I mention that “After all, Texas was part of Mexico until Santa Anna made a series of terrible decisions.” They agree that’s why where I live is not part of Mexico. The Texians and Mexican settlers that rebelled were lucky they went to war against an idiot.
If they would make that movie, it would probably be a lot better than the drivel that has otherwise been made on the subject.
I’m a white guy so I’m not in much of a position to talk, but my perception is that Hispanic attitudes toward the Alamo are as variable as the people who fall under the umbrella of “Hispanic.” I certainly know folks of Hispanic heritage who fly the Gonzales Flag and grumble about how Texas should have stayed it’s own republic (perpetually broke and constantly invaded thought it was). And there were prominent Tejanos who championed and fought for Texas independence.
But I also understand how the Alamo can symbolize the ascent of an Anglo power structure that dispossessed Tejanos of land their families had held for generations, and systematically discriminated against Latinos and deprived them of their civil rights. During Julian Castro’s presidential run, there was an interesting article I read about his mother Rosie who is a political activists and absolutely despises the Alamo and it’s mythology. When asked about his thoughts about the Alamo, Julian talked about it’s impact to the San Antonio economy.
I’m not saying there were. The significant point raised by Forget the Alamo is that the way the story is taught in Texas (apparently about the sixth grade) Santa Anna and his forces are presented as the “bad guys”, and so kids with hispanic background frequently have the experience of being looked at by their classmates as collaborators, or something. I can understand why it’s a sore point.
I think the authors, in their zeal to show that dark side of Texas history, let Santa Anna off too easily. He was re-asserting centralized federal power, it’s true, but he was also taking a big step back in going back to an earlier, illiberal Mexican Constitution that , for instance, exempted the clergy and military from civilian courts and gave them special privileges. It’s not surprising the Tejanos balked at this, along with the “Texicans”.
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that you did say there was a bad guy. I took those Texas history courses. I don’t recall Mexico or Mexicans being shown as the bad guys. It was more that Santa Anna was a power mad idiot. People such as Juan Seguin were discussed, for example. So, I don’t know of any way the curriculum did what the author claims.
Yeah, the more I learn about that book, the more I think the author is pushing a sensationalist angle to sell books and the Pubbies are accommodating him because it works for their own sensationalist angle. The author has asserted in at least one NPR story that slavery was a big part of the reason for the rebellion. It was a part of it (and freed slaves often understandably joined the Mexican side), but it wasn’t a large one. Slavery just wasn’t a big part of the economy in Texas at the time. Out of a population of about 70K at the time of the revolution, there were about 5K slaves in Texas. A large number, but not to the point where it dominated the economy.
Mexico hadn’t freed those slaves, and Santa Anna wasn’t marching on Texas to do so. He was there to put down an armed insurrection. That insurrection arose from the Texians’ inability to follow just about any of Mexico’s laws and bristling at any attempt by the government to bring them under control.