Part one: our regular check in with Scott Braddock,,the editor of the QuorumReport, the Dean of the Austin Press Corps, the Voice ot Texas
topics:
Texas is experiencing a complete meltdown. The Texas Republican Party has elected a new Chair, Allen West, who is a super-trumper, and a former Representative from Florida, with a long history of fanning the flames of the culture wars. This was done during the online Convention, which was plagued by technical glitches, including a cyber attack on the voting system.
“Our hospitals look like war zones”: Texas battling influx of COVID-19 cases. It has become routine in some hospitals to triage incoming patients according to the expectation of their survival. Those who are not likely to survive are simply sent home to die.
Gov. Abbott under 50% for both coronavirus response and in overall job approval, per new Quinnipiac poll
Texas politics in 2020: Imagine being the Congressman who attends Tea Party events with Little Governor Dan Patrick and also voted last night to remove Confederate monuments from the Capitol in DC
Texas Lawmakers start to process the bad budget news they had been bracing for: A nearly $5 billion shortfall
Part two: our bi-monthly check-in with Bill Curry, former Clinton Advisor, candidate for Governor of CT, progressive commentator and writer
Topics:
Trump is changing his stance on the virus, though the news media is not holding him accountable for his previous stance for months. But Trump has seemed to realize that his base, many of whom are older, is dying off due to the virus. He now wants to be in the political mainstream. In his remarks in the most recent event ( the ‘virus update’ that turned into a political event), he admitted that it would get worse before it got better.
-McConnell is hostile to unemployment benefits.
-Trump’s remarks about Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, “I wish her well”, unprecedented, and this has caused a lot of speculation. Was this a threat? Was this a promise to intervene in her case, because of what she could tell?
-Trump is sending his secret police to various cities with Democratic mayors. This is being done to intimidate protestors.and to create a sense of emergency.
-Trump continues to insist on sending children back to school this fall, even though it will likely cause more deaths.
-Discussion about defunding Police should be framed as Demilitarizing the Police, since this is what the actual goal is. But, this is a more complicated idea, which requires more than a slogan.
-Trump, the greatest liar ever, is creating a sense of fear and panic, and has many common traits with Joe McCarthy. It was the Army who actually took down McCarthy, and maybe it’s time for the army to take on Trump. The Army is diverse, increasingly brown, and is organized.
