Back in the Golden Age of blogging the Texas Republican Party platform was a regular object of ridicule, one that I'd write about every couple of years. It was always a hoot. Take back the Panama Canal! Return to the gold standard! Abolish the federal income tax!
Today the Texas GOP platform is back in the news because they're reminding everyone that Texas retains the right to secede from the Union. They've been doing this for a long time, though, so it's hardly new. Still, just to remind everyone what a bunch of loons these folks are, here's a short, curated list of some of the batfuckery in the 2022 platform:
- Support for constitutional amendments to (a) repeal the federal income tax, (b) have legislatures appoint senators, (c) make English the official language of the US.
- Also: abolish the estate tax, inventory taxes, carbon taxes, business franchise taxes, taxes on phone and internet services, the Affordable Care Act Home Sales Tax, and state property taxes.
- Due to widespread fraud by the Democratic Party, Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president.
- Repeal the minimum wage.
- Fine corporations that publicly support boycotts in protest of legislative action related to abortion, trans rights, CRT, vaccinations, etc.
- Privatize Social Security.
- Make machine guns legal.
- Abolish the Federal Reserve.
- Ban all sex education of any kind. Ditto for all reproductive health services in schools.
- Phonics!
- Guns for teachers!
- There are only two genders, and they are fixed at birth by God. Penalize corporations who object to legislation that protects children from "hormones and puberty blockers designed to fake transition from one gender to another."
- Abolish all federal welfare programs.
- Homosexuality is an "abnormal lifestyle choice." Transgender identities should not be "validated."
- No mask mandates, vaccination mandates, contact tracing, or quarantine.
- Allow patients access to any experimental drugs they want.
- Physicians who perform elective abortions should be liable to prosecution for murder.
- Jurors should be fully informed of their historical right to jury nullification.
- Repeal the Johnson Amendment! This is an oldie but a goody. The Johnson Amendment prohibits nonprofits, including churches, from endorsing or opposing political candidates. It was passed unanimously and without comment in 1954.
- End gay marriage.
- "Rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws and support covenant marriage."
- Hold a referendum next year to see if Texans want to secede from the union.
- No gun free zones, regardless of whether private entities want them.
- Mail ballots should be available only to people who can't physically show up at a polling place.
- Build the wall!
- China is bad. Iran is bad. North Korea is bad. Israel is good. Taiwan is good.
- We should withdraw from the United Nations. Also, we should remove even a hint of support for Agenda 21 and other leftist UN programs.
There's much more, of course. This is just a taste. And I have to give the Texas GOP credit for moving with the times and finally removing antiquated references to the Panama Canal and the gold standard—though since they want to abolish the Fed, a return to the gold standard might be implied.
Just generally, I would call your attention to the clause allowing doctors to be prosecuted for murder if they perform elective abortions. Like most of the 2022 platform, it's not new. It was also part of the 2020 platform. But it's something that most abortion opponents try to downplay. Not the Texas GOP, though. They're eager to start tossing abortion providers in jail.
>>They're eager to start executing abortion providers.<<
FIFY
Or anyone.
Before Virginia Democrats held both chambers of the General Assembly & the governor's office & abolished the death penalty here, when two states were scheduling numerous executions, there was an editorial or column - in the Virginian-Pilot, as I recall - that asked "Texas & Virginia: separated at birth?"
"Allow patients access to any experimental drugs they want."
There might be quicker ways to end all drug development, but I can't think of them right now.
I wonder if what they are saying is that people should have access to LSD if they want it.
Scala already found against with his no religious exemption for peyote decision.
"Patients" is an important limitation; they're not proposing to simply legalize recreational use. Also, is LSD "experimental"?
Or to get doctors to pack up and leave en masse.
This is the offbook use of Ivermectin & Hydroxichloroquine provision for Plandemic Truthers.
Why do we even need prescriptions? I do my own research, damn it!
If the law is as sweeping as it sounds and eliminates legal consideration of ethical constraints in trials of new drugs, and eliminates liability for bad effects of experimental drugs, it would make drug trials easier and cheaper. Drug developers would have to be careful to ensure that their results were not biased by differences between people who will willingly take experimental and possibly dangerous drugs and those who won't, but it would simplify things a lot if they didn't have to worry about harming or killing their experimental subjects.
I don't think English as official language is particularly crazy. Unneeded but not crazy.
Super-crazy to force everyone to interact with the government in only one language.
Since it is the overwhelming majority of language not really. Of course this should be coupled with free resources to learn the language and reasonable attempts at accomodating people who haven't. Nothing about making it the official language requires it be exclusive. But people who live here should be expected to attempt to learn it.
And right now as a practical matter it's like that almost anytime you interact with a government entity for most languages.
Virginia's Fairfax County provides many pamphlets on public resources & even driver's tests in up to 28 languages, I believe. Otherwise, local government wouldn't function well unless translators could be provided.
Yeah Fairfax is the key here. You are right outside the most important city on Earth, there will be a ton of languages. Other places like say Minneapolis have English, Spanish, Hmong, Somali. Other places have English and Spanish, many others just do English. Nothing about making it the official language precludes helping people in other languages and then translating to English for records.
Well, don't say that DC is "the most important city on earth." And i do know how translations are not always accurate; that's why I used to review some items for Colombian friends. "After the fact," it's often too late to correct.
Since Europeans eliminated many native languages, as well as the indigenous people who spoke them, English should not be formally recognized as being "official."
It's Texas. Don't you think that's precisely why they want English to be the official language?
¡Por supuesto, claro que si!
Much as I would hate to lose/have to pay for the moving of the Johnson Spaceflight Center, that could be particularly ... entertaining.
Austin would have to be an "open city".
Maybe California could have a referendum too on whether Texas should leave the Union...
If we all had that referendum Texas might win whether they like it or not.
Lol!
About 6 weeks ago, a Ukrainian talked about how Americans would feel if they had ro lose a state. The overwhelming majority were fine with it depending on the state. Texas obviously came up a lot. The woman replied that commenters were not taking it seriously.
She was wrong.
Build the Wall! Extend it all the way around Texas to isolate it from the rest of the US. Then, turn Texas into a giant, open-air prison. Maybe Kurt Russell can make another one of those "Escape" movies: Escape from Texas!
Not a prison, Institution for the Absurdly Insane.
Lol, agenda 21. Texas are the biggest neoliberal globalists. Including these guys. They need capitalism and the free market globalism pretty heavily. Like Semitic influenced people, the collectivist patriarchy were terrify these beta wimps. Their women will be raped and all of them killed.
Doctors are sent to prison for life for providing abortion care while rapists are let off with a stern warning if they can claim they had a legitimate boner.
Social conservatism is the enemy of humanity.
Quite a bit of "social conservatism" appears to be ideally designed to keep both minorities & women from having "too much" power.
It's designed to motivate those incapable of context or scale and who are low in empathy anxiety riddled who have anxieties related to this because everyone else is on to something they're not really getting through giving them simple solutions to complex problems by blaming an easily victimized, helpless population, convenient because most have never even met them.
"Legitimate Boner".
I lost it right here.
When they don't have power, they're cranky jerks with weird resentments.
When they do, they're Mussolini.
Makes one wish they were just promising bread and circuses.
The RWNJs believe that is what "lefties" do.
All center-left bloggers must be extradited to Texas for prosecution and reeducation.
Texas is going to host showtrials for shitlibs?
Chapo Traphouse just endorsed the Texas GQP platform.
I for one always enjoy MTCAM. This one particularly. 😄
It would be a safer and better world if every child could carry a loaded Glock 9 to school in his lunch pail, but, no, we can't have nice things because liberals and Godlessness.
We used to be a proper country...
I was intrigued by their assertion that teenagers were the ones who most needed guns for self-defense, and might have to get them quickly if there was, like, a riot. As someone at 'Lawyers Guns & Money' observed, they could call it the Rittenhouse Principle.
No contact tracing... They want to right to infect people without repercussions?
In Texas freedom to infect and be infected shall not be abridged.
I'm sure they'll make an exception for HIV. Gotta have some way to put all us fags in jail.
You watch Patient Zero!?
(H/t to & w/ Flava.)
It must be great to be a Republican. Where else can you talk about what a great patriot you are and embrace the flag while at the same time talking about how much you hate the government and how you want your state to secede from the union and be its own country? And everyone just accepts it and lets you get away with calling a football player who takes a knee during the national anthem a “traitor”.
This
They're not really interested in the gold standard, though, they'll be going with the plutonium standard.
Guns for groomers?
I'm actually in favor of phonics. I learned to read by phonics, my sister by sight reading or whatever the other method is called. She struggled till she figured out the phonics on her own.
Not that phonics is perfect. E.g. It had been a tough week, but she was finally over her cough, so she sloughed off her clothes and jumped in the slough for a swim.
I'm in favor of the referendum. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Texas.
Of course I'd love to not suffer through the weirdos they send to congress, but consider the climate. They'd have to support themselves with their oil, and we'd lose any ability to constrain them. Just another petro-state. It'd be "drill, baby drill" all the way to climate disaster.
One would think that the Democrats would nail every Republican candidate with a Do you support or oppose your party's platform. Every single day until the general election.
But you know they won't.
Unfortunately, their core voters would be enthusiastically in favor.
Might still be worth doing to motivate the mushy middle, and to motivate the leftist base to get their asses to the polls.
I try not to succumb to the temptation to dehumanize one’s opponents, but sometimes they do the job themselves. Legalize machine guns? Right after 19 school kids get killed? Heartless. No moral compass, not even an idea of what that is….