Freedumb! Owning The Libs Version

Texas governor will bar local governments from requiring masks

‘Only a third of Texans are fully vaccinated, below the US average of 37 percent, according to a New York Times database. No Covid vaccines have been authorized yet for children under 12.’ https://t.co/yc6EaoOt33

— Andrew deGrandpre (@adegrandpre) May 19, 2021

Once again Gov. Absent is racing to get in front of the parade and wave his magic stone that keeps the elephants away.  Rural voters who don’t live all that close to Houston, Dallas/Ft Worth, Austin, San Antonio, or El Paso, consider Texas cities godless Sodom and Gomorrahs that deserve the iniquity of COVID because of their mask-wearing, freedumb-hating, ways.  They are happy to think Gov. Absent is pwning the godless libs, even if he’s doing nothing at all.

I doubt Gov. Absent can enforce fines against government officials who don’t comply with his orders, and I think it would be a fruitless task to try.  (His “executive order” includes a provision of fining any official who refuses to comply $1000.  I don’t think he has that legislative authority.) He’s also told school districts, over which he has no authority, that they must rescind any mask mandates by June 4.  He knows school will be out by then. He also knows most schools, especially the large districts in the urban areas, will probably rescind mask mandates for the new school year in the fall, if not earlier. So he’s waving his magic stone again; and he knows it.

Beyond that, he knows the GOP in D.C. is starting a “revolution” (to which nobody came) in the House against masks, and he wants to be a prominent local figure in that national parade, too.  And that most of the people in Texas who haven’t gotten vaccinated are most likely Republicans.  For him, this is a win-win. 

The next question is whether Ken Paxton thinks he needs another distraction and decides to sue any number of local officials across Texas who seem to be insufficiently following the commands of Gov. Absent.  I don’t expect much from that; this “crisis” is winding down, and producing diminishing returns on the outrage scale.  Oddly, GOP legislators are working on laws to limit the Governor’s authority in situations like this.  The Gov. is giving them ammunition to do so.

And let me just throw this in here:

“The overwhelming majority of transplant patients, even after a second dose of the vaccine, appear to have suboptimal protection — if any protection — from the vaccine.”

Fascinating @arianaeunjung on why so many immunocompromised Americans remain at risk. https://t.co/n60IxdoNRW

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) May 19, 2021

There's been a lot of attention in the Lege this year to transgendered students, both in athletics and in allowing doctors to provide them any medical care related to transitioning (there was a bill to make such medical treatment illegal, but it failed to become law, I think; not sure what happened to the former).

Nobody has expressed any concern about the vulnerability of the immunocomrpomised.  I guess it hasn’t been a hot topic on FoxNews.