🤡 To The Left Of Me, 🃏 To The Right

'What is this?' CNN reporter baffled after Mike Lindell shows him 'proof of nothing' in train wreck interview https://t.co/AmqIpP9pGq

— Raw Story (@RawStory) August 6, 2021

she seems nice https://t.co/dcQReTNj4G

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2021

Book your hospital beds early. It’s Covid season. https://t.co/2NOAuZ5wEJ

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 6, 2021

Mike Lindell has talked and talked and talked about “election fraud” and computer code and Anne Applebaum is scared to death he is the next Goebbels. Except Lindell is a sideshow clown who thinks the line of code he can neither read nor understand contains evidence that votes in all 50 states were flipped for Biden from Trump.  He can’t explain how either, but someone told him that’s what it says (or did they?), and he’s convinced it happened.  Can he convince anyone else, is the question.

Signs point to "No."

School boards are, we are told, being used as launching pads for the Trump takeover of the republic.  This same line was used to warn us about the imminent collapse of democracy due to the machinations of the Koch brothers.  They, too, were going to start with the school boards.  They might as well have started with the dog catcher.  The problem with the analysis is, most people don’t know who’s on their school board, and it’s a poor springboard to higher office.  I can only speak for Texas (I haven’t done a 50 state study), but here these elections are non-partisan.  I suspect I’ve voted for more than one Republican to my local school board, but I generally approve of how they run things.  The fact is, school boards don’t run that much.  It’s a peculiar job, with more responsibility than authority. In Texas school boards set policy, hire superintendents, approve large purchases (like real property), sell property, etc. They don’t set curriculum, hire or fire teachers, or generally discipline employees except as they have to put the final stamp on a decision already made by administrative procedures.  Much of the policy work they do is done in coordination with school administrators and is, at best, notional and what the school (principals, teachers, administrators) is already doing anyway.  But school board members work long hours, don’t get paid, and travel more than you’d think.  Much of what they do is already determined by state law.  They aren't state agency bureaucrats with power, much less legislators.

For example, school boards can’t approve or disapprove of teaching “critical race theory.”  They can’t ban, or approve, books in the classroom (except, perhaps, auxiliary reading lists beyond state approved textbooks).  They can only do so much, and there’s actually precious little they can do.  It’s a volunteer job you have to pay to get (school board members are elected in Texas, which means you have to buy yard signs, at least), and you’ll spend a lot of time doing the job, open all your text messages and e-mails to public scrutiny, and generally take it in the neck when people, as now, get upset easily over things they don’t understand.

So it’s kind of delicious the screaming woman tells the board she won’t leave until they take a “re-vote.”  The board simply adjourned and left the building.  It’s one way to deal with people who think democracy means they get their way.  As for that incident being another sign that the foundations of democracy are crumbling in America:  not hardly.

And Gov. Who is already finding out he can’t buffalo Covid by blaming somebody else for it.  He’s in the driver’s seat, he’s the one responsible, and school is opening.  Parents take the health of their children very seriously, and blathering about giving them the “choice” to protect their children is rather like saying there are going to be school shootings, so maybe you should buy your kids some Kevlar.  Not exactly the policy you want from a government official.

Meanwhile, in Texas, we are literally hostage to the lunatic fringe:

“I think it’s pretty clear in the data that Texas is in the middle — or beginning, depending on how you look at it — of a really major pandemic surge, and not just in case counts but particularly in looking at health care needs across the state,” said Spencer Fox, associate director of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin. “Many regions are now facing numbers that we haven’t seen since the winter.”

Fox attributed the rising numbers to the state’s “lagging” vaccination rate of 44% — toward the back of the pack nationally — and Texans returning to their pre-pandemic lifestyles.

“Right now, just in general people are acting as close to normal as any point in the pandemic,” Fox said.

Dan Crenshaw and Gov. Absent think that's just fine and dandy.

In June, [Abbott] signed a bill into law banning businesses from requiring proof of the vaccine from their customers. That followed his April executive order banning state agencies, political subdivisions and organizations receiving public funds from creating “vaccine passports” or otherwise requiring someone to provide proof of a COVID-19 vaccine in order to receive services.

More recently, elected officials from both parties have gotten an added reason to stress vaccination: almost everyone falling severely ill from the virus is unvaccinated, according to reports from across the country.

“The bottom line is for people that are hesitant or anxious about being immunized is that you really only have two choices: You’ll either become infected or you’ll become immunized,” state Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, a physician, said Tuesday. “We need to communicate that as clearly as we possibly can and encourage people that that’s how we end this pandemic.”

Public health experts say the pandemic in Texas will not be helped by the coming school year, especially after Abbott’s latest order making clear that no district can require students to wear masks or get vaccinated. Abbott took that further in the second special session agenda he unveiled Thursday, asking lawmakers to effectively codify that executive order.

Fox said Texas is “trending in the wrong direction” for a safe return to in-person learning.

Just in time for us to send all our kids into the contagion zone.

For Abbott, there are also political considerations. He is up for reelection next year and already has at least three primary challengers, the best-known being former state Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas and former Texas GOP Chairman Allen West. Both have long been critics of Abbott’s pandemic management — and are keeping the heat on him as the calls increase for new statewide restrictions.

“Texans need restrictions on illegals entering our State without Covid testing and violating our rule of law,” West said in a statement. “We don’t need a return to mandating behaviors of legal, law abiding Texans.”

I'm not sure what Allen West thinks laws do in the first place.  But it's that kind of absolute cluelessness that seems to be in charge right now.

God help us all.