this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 149 points 9 months ago (11 children)

Jesus, I get off work and suddenly there are 20 reports on comments about Abbott being in a wheelchair.

Removing ALL of them. You want to make fun of him for being a useless fuck? Go ahead. Pick on him for being emotionally and intellectually bankrupt? Not a problem.

Going after him because he can't walk is low hanging fruit. Do better.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

For the unaware: He’s in a wheelchair because a tree branch fell on him while he was jogging. He sued the homeowner where the accident occurred, won millions in the settlement, and even got the homeowner on the hook for lost future earnings. Abbott had just graduated from law school a few months prior to the accident, and argued that since he wasn’t able to work he should be compensated for his future lost earnings. So the homeowner has to pay him a wage of $14k/mo (an amount the judge decided would be fair for a lawyer to make if they were able to work full time) for the rest of his life. Abbott then used that money to kickstart his political career.

The only time it’s “acceptable” to make fun of him being in a wheelchair is when pointing out his hypocrisy, because one of his first acts as a lawmaker was to put a cap on his exact type of settlement, with an exception for himself. So nobody else can get the same kind of massive settlement he did. The dude is the very definition of “pulling up the ladder behind himself.”

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

Thank you. That was pretty disappointing both how readily they were coming out and how thoroughly they were being supported. Taking a hard stand to not make that the norm is good for the community.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Thank you mister janitor.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's all showboating from Abbott. Prick probably thinks he has a chance at being President one day.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

I think that they'd all rather be Sarah Palin than Donald Trump. Get famous enough that you can spend the rest of your days as a Fox/OAN talking head and 'best selling' author.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 9 months ago (8 children)

The Astroturfing is strong here, does anyone actually believe that liberals are suddenly, with absolutely no warning, crawling over each other to mock his disabilities instead of his decisions, despite never having done so before?

Obvious setup is obvious.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

C'mon, not every shit take on the internet is paid by Putin or whatever. If it was, I'd have enough money to do something else

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 9 months ago (11 children)

Abbott’s neo-secessionist bluster, cheered on by GOP governors and Republicans in Washington, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, has set up a confrontation with the federal government over immigration policy. “We encourage all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border,” Donald Trump wrote on Thursday.

Maybe I’m reading about this too much, but I’m in Texas and really starting to worry about how this all ends & what the next step is. I don’t want to overreact, but with Abbott basically telling the feds to fuck off and Trump encouraging other states to send their National Guard…you know how crazy that fanbase is, we saw it on 1/6.

I know Eisenhower nationalized the Guard when Arkansas tried to pull this shit with desegregation, and yeah Biden has some harder choices because it’s an election year.

I guess I just don’t know where this goes and I hate it. I fucking hate that this is where we’re at.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My tin foil hat theory is this is all a conspiracy to create another pain in the ass situation for Biden to have to deal with on an election year .

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago

No need for the tinfoil, that's literally what this is.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't think Biden will do anything really. He is already making concessions by trying to push an extremely bad immigration bill in congress. His strategy for dealing with this stuff seems to be to make concessions, sending cases to the courts, and just wait for Texas and Republicans to move their attention to something else.

I think Biden should activate the national guard and force them to stop their shenanigans, but I don't think he will.

The Dems are playing the political game like they're in the 1990s, and the Reps are playing the game like they're in 1930s Germany.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Nothing is going to happen. Congress will pass a shitty immigration bill. Abbott will claim a victory for Texas and the whole thing will blow over.

The interesting thing is that Trump is trying to prevent congress from acting because he wants to campaign on the immigration issue. If Biden is able to get something through it will look like a victory.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Something will happen, and that's the point of Biden's remarks on Friday: If they pass the bill, they give him a victory on immigration he can campaign on. If they bend to the cheeto, he has an answer for the rest of the campaign every time they bring up immigration: You all voted against empowering me to close the border. Because the bill is already all over the news, Johnson's House doesn't have the option to do nothing. [And frankly I don't think it matters that much what Abbott does right this second.]

I half expect to see a repeat of what Biden did at last year's State of the Union re Social Security and Medicare, boxing the GOP in on an issue that's extremely important to them by making them choose between supporting him or taking an unpopular position that abandons their core constituents. If they don't pass this bill, the DNC should be shouting from the rooftops that the Republicans want Russian hegemony in Eastern Europe and open borders in Texas. If they pass it, then it's the biggest border security bill in a decade.

Biden is getting well up in years (and he's not alone in that), and he's no LBJ, but he's still a very capable politician. He's certainly got other campaign problems (ahem, the Israel albatross around his neck), but for the last few days, Joe Biden has basically done everything right on immigration.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (9 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Can we PLEASE, in the Trump / Brexit era, recognize how baseless accelerationism is? Have we not learned the lesson of

"Once these people do this terrible, stupid thing, they will realize how terrible & stupid it is"

-is completely false? And in fact tons of people will double down on the stupid terrible thing? They'll double down so much that they'll gladly swallow horse dewormer & bleach, and not get vaccinated, and literally die drowning in their own fluids before admitting that maybe that wasn't such a good idea?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I live here, in the thick of it, and honestly you could probably just tell most of them succession happened and it worked and everything is fine now and they'd probably believe you, and the crazy part is, they'd never notice because they likely expect nothing to change in their completely unaffected by anything ever in their entitled as hell daily lives

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

It's possible to do illegal things.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

I don't live in Texas, can I start a petition for them to secede?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (4 children)

i, for one, would love to see conservative states get spanked into submission like they did 150 years ago. they need to learn to shut their fucking mouths and do as they're told.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (5 children)

You're aware hundreds of thousands were killed during the Civil War, right?

I, for one, would love to see a resolution without bloodshed.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

One side of the political spectrum has proven that they are willing to kill to get what they want.

Not sure how it will turn out but there's already bloodshed.

The question is how much bloodshed are we willing to see before we do something about it.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I would love to see our national problems solved peacefully but the same republicans pushing for civil war in Texas are the same people who also have been obstructing Congress from doing the will of the people for the last 15 years. They're the same people who tried to overthrow the government when Trump lost to Biden.

Have you been living under a rock, or just idealistic? It might be time to get a bag ready.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

If advocating against a civil war makes me idealistic, then so be it.

Anyone who thinks a civil war is necessary and appropriate is ignorant of the cost of war. They should honestly ask themselves if they would truly back up their words with actions, or do they only hold those feelings behind the safety of a screen.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'd rather see them secede and watch how quickly Texas and Florida get tired of having to carry the rest of the red states without federal money from blue states. We'd be fine or perhaps better of without them, but I don't think the reverse is true.

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