Texas Has a Lot of Cattle and Even More Bull

“House Bill 1925 would make camping in an unapproved public place a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $500.”


“If the bill becomes law, it will mark the latest instance of the Republican-led state government overruling local ordinances.“

Directing the homeless to resources sounds commendable, but are resources plentiful and will this just be a way to harass folks who already have a pretty tough row to hoe? Where is the affordable housing? This is a right-to-work state, meaning wages are low. Where is the mental health assistance? Where is healthcare? Republicans squash any attempt to increase Medicaid.

Meanwhile, another place has taken a more kindly approach to what Texas legislators refer to as “camping.”

How a Tent City Controversy Became a Community’s Epiphany

“Go ahead and vote me out,” says Schwedhelm, recounting his mindset at the time. “You want to shout at me and get angry? Go ahead. It’s important for government to listen, but the reality is these are our neighbors, so let’s help them.”

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76 thoughts on “Texas Has a Lot of Cattle and Even More Bull”

  2. BiD, thanks for the thread.  in texass the homeless weren’t the only ones put in danger by politicians.  the rest of the population will be lucky due to your gov’s whims if they make it through the pandemic.

  4. https://www.wsj.com/articles/iowa-bans-face-mask-mandates-in-schools-joining-texas-11621544808

    Gubernatorial idiocy is also contagious. Iowa will now be full of
    Idiots Out Walking Around without masks.

    “The state’s move follows a similar mask-mandate ban in Texas earlier this week. Lawmakers in Utah are also pushing to keep mandates on face coverings out of schools.”

    Keeping the most unvaccinated portion of the population indoors and unmasked. ~Stellar idea, Republicans~

  6. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/05/19/the-coronavirus-variant-first-detected-in-india-is-now-in-north-texas/
     
    Here ya go, Greg Abbott.

    “Two cases of a coronavirus variant that has spread catastrophically in India have been detected in the Dallas area for the first time…”

    “The two Dallas-area cases are in children younger than 12 who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated. They have no recent travel history, said a Dallas County spokesperson.”

  7. yeah, BiD, the GOPers are only pro-life for the unborn.  once out of the womb “fend for yourself, you’re on your own” is their motto.

  8. From the RTB Cheerful link above. 
    “Priced out of the South Sacramento neighborhood he considers home, Williams has subsisted in a series of squalid lots, regularly packing up and moving from one to the next in response to law enforcement sweeps.”
     
    Our entire country needs to address decent, affordable housing.

    “This taught us valuable lessons on how to keep the unsheltered population safe, but also we were able to get people signed up for health care and ready for housing faster because we knew where they were,” Holmes says. Of the 208 people served at the site, she said, 12 were moved into permanent housing and nearly five dozen placed in shelters while they await openings.“

    Thankfully, there are folks who will advocate for others who can do nothing for them in return. A lesson in humanity when many have forgotten that we are all vulnerable humans.

  9. Yes.  Keep folks poor and uneducated so they can work for peanuts.  Texas is pretty much a circus. 
    I get my second Moderna  vax tomorrow.  Thank you, Dolly and POTUS Joe. Still, I’ll be masking up, always…at least on planes and in stores.  

    “Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream, always.” -Stevie Wonder

  12. emasculaTED [query: how does one emasculate he who is without the necessary accoutrements?] is trending on twitter according to wapo and the hill:

    Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is facing backlash from veterans groups and former service members after he claimed that new promotional videos are pushing a “woke, emasculated military.”
    […]
    The tweet immediately sparked backlash, generating so many response tweets that “#emasculaTED” trended on Twitter, The Washington Post reported.
    Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a retired Army National Guard lieutenant colonel who lost her legs in combat back in 2004, fired back with her own tweet.
    “Holy crap. Perhaps a U.S. Senator shouldn’t suggest that the *Russian* military is better than the American military that protected him from an insurrection he helped foment?” Duckworth wrote.
    [continues]

    Tammy Duckworth on Twitter: “Perhaps he should be thanking these badass women? (📸: Bloomberg @business) https://t.co/Y57SeoaYL4” / Twitter

  13. some insight from franken

    Liz Cheney hadn’t counted on Trump being quite this nuts! The lying, the corruption, the race-baiting were all just peachy. But then, he went too far!

  14. wapo:

    Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), the state’s chief elections officer, advised Maricopa County Thursday that it should replace all voting machines that were turned over to a private contractor for an audit of the 2020 presidential election, citing “grave concerns regarding the security and integrity” of the machines that make them unusable for future elections.
    […]
    In her letter, Hobbs wrote that after the machines were handed over to the Senate and Cyber Ninjas, “it is unclear what, if any procedures were in place or followed to ensure physical security and proper chain of custody.” She noted that no election official or observer was allowed to remain with the machines while Cyber Ninjas and its subcontractors examined them.
    “The lack of physical security and transparency means we cannot be certain who accessed the voting equipment and what might have been done to them,” she wrote, advising that the county “should acquire new machines to ensure secure and accurate elections in Maricopa County going forward.”

    question to trail techies:

    so is it possible that the ninjas could successfully bug the machines? am sure it’s probable that they tried, but how likely is it that such a thing can be accomplished?

  15. I would love to see the Supreme Court vote against abortion rights.  I don’t need my right to choose protected at my age.   Hopefully…  it would wake up the younger generations.  Make them see why we older folks always tell them it’s important to get off your asses and vote.  See…  your rights can be taken away.
     
    Hey if Social Security were ever threatened….  older folks would go to the polls…  we wouldn’t stand for that.

  17. When a Republican uses the word “woke,” or any conjugation of it, it’s a dog whistle. They want “Pleasantville,” but it wasn’t all that pleasant.   (It’s a great movie, if you haven’t seen it…or even if you have.)

  18. the way i see old K Vonn is that he deeply felt that he had to tell the story of what he saw in WWII as a POW and witnessing the firebombing of Dresden.   He spent a long while learning how to write and how to be a writer until he found his voice and finally was able to write down Slaughterhouse 5.   After S-5, he wrote for money and because he found himself able to sustain being someone who made money to write stuff down.

       
    Book of Next Month:  TIMEQUAKE………semi-autobiographical

  19. Well, here in East Bumfuck the song of the day should be Dancing in the Streets. 87 degrees and climbing 

  20. The Covid Wayback Machine has us back to July 9, 2020 with respect to deaths and back to June 23 with respect to cases.  Both categories are continuing to fall but “deaths” is doing so very slowly.  Here’re the trend numbers for the past week.

    New daily reported cases fell 17.4% 
    New daily reported deaths fell 7.9% 
    Covid-related hospitalizations fell 13.1% 

    Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 4.6%.
    The number of tests reportedfell 13.3%

    Thanks to Wapo. Now, carry on and if you haven’t, get vaccinated.

  22. …funny: you know all the big bubbas walking around maskless aren’t fully vaccinated (if at all), and everyone still wearing one probably is😒

  23. Pogo…  pick an election…  any election…  the largest voting demographic is 55 yrs +.  The smallest voting demographic is 18-24 yrs olds.   Abortion rights affect younger people…. unless women 55 yrs+ can start performing miracles…  🙂

  25. Renee, i get that, but whazzis older folks shit? (I wish I needed a definition of when one joins that group). 🤣

    And I want me one of those Anxiety Companion Honey Badgers – the idea of something that attacks and savages the living hell out of idiots who bother me seems like just the ticket.

  26. Honey badger as support animal seems counter intuitive because as everybody know:  Honey Badger don’t care.

  27. It’s Sundress Weather in the Arctic

     
    It’s only May, but it feels like summer has arrived in my hometown of Baltimore. Since I woke up, I’ve been counting the hours until I can drink iced cocktails on my deck while wearing a sundress. Can you blame me? It’s 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.7 degrees Celsius) out.
    There’s another reason I really need a drink, though: That’s the same temperature it is in the Arctic today. Welcome to climate hell.
    In fact, parts of the Arctic circle got even warmer than that on Wednesday. It was 86.5 degrees (30.3 degrees Celsius) in the Russian town of Nizhnyaya Pesha, and 91 degrees Fahrenheit (32.3 degrees Celsius) in the nearby town of Kolezma. The wildly high temperatures came as part of an ongoing heat wave in the region.
     
    https://earther.gizmodo.com/its-sundress-weather-in-the-arctic-1846928838

  28. Pogo…    ahhhhh….   smacking hand to forehead….   you want a definition of “old”.
    Everyone over 80 tells me that that is when the shit hits the fan.  So party until then…

  30. I await the new images at the Siberian Times this season .  This heat wave is just the latest in a chain of them that really got started 3 years ago. 
    The Russian theory of the “New Arctic”  is centered on them shipping LNG  out of the gas fields in this very region. The one fly in that honey pot is their assumption  that the landscape  will still have permafrost. 
    Their entire infrastructure is sitting on it.  
    And it is all gonna melt under them.  Or explode under them –
     
     

  31. 10 years ago  these things were unknown in the Arctic.  All of the known ones are centered in the Russian gas fields. 
    On a lighter note –
    The Sierra Snowpack is 2% of average .  

  35. In an interview on CNN’s “Erin BurnettOutFront,” Jennifer Weisselberg predicted that her former father-in-law, Allen Weisselberg, would flip on Trump when directly asked.
    Allen Weisselberg has overseen the organization’s finances for more than 40 years. CNNreported Wednesdaythat New York Attorney GeneralLetitia James(D) has been investigating his personal taxes in a criminal capacity for months.

     
    The New York AG is about to stick a fork  in that fat orange turkey. 

  37. I just love the way those DA’s are torqueing the screws. 
    He must be foaming at the mouth . Allen has been working for him for 40 years.  Pretty hard to do his usual song and dance.  And Allen is no fool , plus he’s an old man . 
    Remember , his German Bankers bailed  a long time ago. 
     
    Funny how the right all picked passage on the “Good Ship Trump” .
     
     

  41. Yep, makes me want to see a whole bunch of forkin’.   Fork ’em all.   Some of ’em twice.

  42. Breaking News –
    The Republican Party  is abandoning the iconic Nast image of an elephant .
    From now on, we’ll know them by an image of “Flesh Eating Bacteria” .
    The actual slide of the germ is yet to be decided. 

  43. Trump ‘acts like a mafioso’: Why NY’s AG may treat the Trump Organization like a mob racket in its criminal inquiry, according to legal experts
     
    https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-organization-rico-racketeering-new-york-attorney-general-criminal-investigation-2021-5

    Insider spoke with University of Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, who helped draft the 1970 federal RICO Act and similar legislation in 22 states, and Jeffrey Robbins, a white-collar attorney and former federal prosecutor, about how such laws could come into play.

     
     

  44. 20,000 people have already booked a place to buy the new Ford F-150 EV truck. 
    I never thought I would ever type that.  It has a  300 mile range  , will tow 10,000 lbs.  And it’s battery can run your house for days. 

  45. We have done it , your house and your car  are your power plant .
    You come home , and plug your car into your house,  they share the demand , and storage .  Your roof or your wind mill  charge the house batteries , your car is covered in solar cells that look like paint.   If it’s in the sun it is charging it’s batteries. 
     
    Meet Jorge Jetson. 

  48. Blue –
    Good catch . 
    Hearst  had thousands of acres  of pulp wood. Hemp was legal , and it made great paper.   That is why we had that crazy war on pot for nearly 90 years. 
     
    It was all about the price of newsprint. 

  49. The eviction  wave is here. 
    Millions will be living on the streets, that were protected by mandates. 
    The best guess 45 million will be homeless. 
    Lester Holt was looking at LA tonight. 

  51. I spent time in Venice , Ca. I was homeless  in Estes Park. 
     
    Why did the homeless invade Venice ? 
    Public toilets on the beach.
    A place to get clean , and a place  to take a dump. 

  52. This wave is a daughter  of the plague. 
    We are about to see  more “Black Swans”  than we ever dreamed of. 

  54. I’m dancin’ at the “Music Box”  just over the tracks with girl I just met at the  Clover Leaf Dairy  ice cream shop. 
    No one ever kissed a woman like I kissed Debra . We were drunk on that kiss  for years. 

  57. I few tears later I was sitting on a pile of rail road ties in the Santa Fe yard at Clovis , penniless , covered in diesel soot.
    I had a radio , I turned it on .

    It was a Tuesday afternoon.

  58. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/20/texas-constitutional-carry/

    “Abbott has said he would sign into law a “constitutional carry” proposal. Schaefer’s House Bill 1927 would eliminate the requirement for Texas residents to obtain a license to carry handguns if they’re not barred by state or federal law from possessing a gun.“

    Again, pro-life, my ass.

    https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/03/texas-voters-legislature-poll/

    “Overall, 59% oppose unlicensed carry — a number driven up by the 85% of Democrats who oppose it.”

  59. A West bound  dining car rolled slowly  by  the tables had roses next to the windows.  A few diners saw me .  I waved at them .  I caught the train into Lubbock, and my mom . I was a terrible son. 

  61. This album was never played on the radio when it was new.  And it has never been raised since then. 
    It is the crown jewel  of the sixties music.

    The songs were too long.   That was their sin.

  71. Aha, WONDERFUL album. White Bird is one of the prettiest songs I’ve ever listened to. 

    White bird In a golden cage
    On a winter’s day In the rain

    White bird In a golden cage
    Alone

    The leaves blow Across the long, black road
    To the darkened skies In it’s rage

    But the white bird Just sits in her cage
    Unknown
     
    White bird must fly
    Or she will die

    Beautiful lyrics, wonderful tune. 
     

  72. I am in the hall , they sold  names on guitar picks. that made a mural  of Buddy.  I am in the mix , Colorado Bob. 
     
    I have yet to see it. 

    I am a big fan of selling picks , you buy a 1,000 and a two sided pick is around 20 cents.

    It sells like hot cakes at a buck.

  73. One side say’s –
    “I picked  yada, yada, yada”
    The other side has the GPS of yada, yada, yada.
    You sell them from a gold fish bowl, on the counter .  One dollar becomes five dollars.   

    This how I funded that garden on Buddy Holly Ave.  

  74. I still have the earrings

    Tomorrow morning I will get my 2nd chip implanted. Nite all

  75. I sold T-shirts  hand over fist off my V-Twin Honda.  In Wyoming at night. 
    I did the graphics , with such gems as , “Your Hole is Our Goal”. 
    That got me my own screen  press .  I could print any thing I wanted.  
    And I did.  I designed and sold 10,000 bumper stickers  to the Spindletop
    Museum , and the one in Midland as well.  5,000 to a dyamite company that said “Dinosaur Hunter”.
      All of these I farmed out to a big press in Kan.  called Gill Line. 
     
    I was making 40 cents a  sticker. 
     
    Printing is a wonderful way to make money. 
     
     
     

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