Posts Tagged ‘Texas’

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Texas Border Control Update for January 2, 2023

Monday, January 2nd, 2023

Some updates on Texas’ attempt to secure the border that the Biden Administration has intentionally left unsecured.

First, Texas Governor Greg Abbott started building a shipping container wall along the border.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that on Tuesday shipping containers were added to the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, serving as a blockade, as the city declared a state of emergency earlier in December to deal with the surge of illegal immigrants crossing into the US.

Abbott tweeted on Wednesday, “Texas is adding shipping containers to the US-Mexico border in El Paso. This is in addition to the razor wire and National Guard. Together, the strategies are causing illegal immigration at that location to plummet.” 

As The Post Millennial reported on December 14, El Paso has seen an average of 2,460 illegal immigrants cross into the US daily. That figure surged in the preliminary lead up to the expiration of Title 42,, which gave officials the ability to expel illegal immigrants over health concerns. 

On December 19, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a stay on the lifting of Title 42, originally scheduled to expire on December 21, and the pause has stalled the surge of border crossers entering the US.

Shipping containers may provide a decent stop-gap solution in highly trafficked areas, but fall far short of a comprehensive border wall solution.

Second, numerous counties in Texas have declared that an invasion is taking place.

At least 40 counties in Texas reportedly passed or considered resolutions last year claiming illegal immigration is an “invasion” amid a debate over how aggressively Gov. Greg Abbott should confront the federal government over border security.

The Center Square indicated that the following counties are included on the list: Atascosa, Burnet, Chambers, Clay, Collin, Ector, Edwards, Ellis, Fannin, Goliad, Hamilton, Hardin, Hood, Hunt, Jack, Jasper, Johnson, Kinney, Lavaca, Leon, Liberty, Live Oak, Madison, McMullen, Montague, Navarro, Orange, Parker, Presidio, Shackelford, Somervell, Terrell, Throckmorton, Tyler, Van Zandt, Waller, Wharton, Wichita, Wilson, and Wise.

Of those, only Terrell and Presidio are actually on the border.

Many of the resolutions were written to back Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, secure grant funding from the State of Texas, and pressure the federal government to take more aggressive steps to deter illegal immigration. Part of the funding, which was included in an appropriations bill passed in September 2021, is to help counties pay for additional law enforcement to respond to the increased criminal activity that accompanies illegal immigration.

Those who support border security measures focused on deterrence often say “every county is a border county.” Counties have cited fatal drug overdoses and concerns about human trafficking as part of the basis for passing these documents, even if many of the jurisdictions in question are hundreds of miles away from the border.

Gov. Greg Abbott embraced the characterization of illegal immigration as an “invasion,” but his approach to the strategy has been complicated.

In November, Abbott tweeted that he had invoked the “invasion” clauses of the federal and state constitutions and outlined border security measures that he had taken. Many news outlets reported the development as breaking news, but Abbott had instituted most of the measures he listed months earlier.

The U.S. Constitution requires the federal government to protect states against invasions. In addition, Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution authorizes states to protect themselves against the same.

“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay,” the provision reads.

Article IV, Section 7 of the Texas Constitution addresses how the governor is to respond if the state is invaded.

“He shall be Commander-in-Chief of the military forces of the State, except when they are called into actual service of the United States. He shall have power to call forth the militia to execute the laws of the State, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions,” the section reads.

All of these may help stem the giant Democrat-encouraged flow of illegal aliens into the country, but not as much as the federal government living up to its constitutional obligations to defend the border.

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Posted in Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Republicans | 3 Comments »

Twitter Lawsuit Against Ken Paxton Dismissed

Wednesday, December 28th, 2022

Here’s a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General filed under the pre-Musk Twitter regime that was just dimissed.

In a Tuesday press release, Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed legal victory over Twitter after a federal appeals court threw out the social media company’s lawsuit against him.

After President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, the Texas Office of the Attorney General issued a “civil investigative demand” (CID) for Twitter to reveal information on how it moderates content.

Paxton said he wanted to determine whether Twitter had violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

As we know from the ongoing Twitter revelations following Musk’s takeover, there was a whole lot of deception (and censorship) going on.

Twitter then sued Paxton in the Northern District of California for violation of the First Amendment. The district court dismissed the case as not “prudentially ripe,” meaning it would be better decided in the future when there was more information.

A discussion of “ripeness” as a legal concept in lawsuits is far beyond the scope of my expertise. (Ditto “standing.”)

A panel of judges affirmed that decision and added that the case was “not constitutionally ripe,” meaning it rested on hypothetical future events rather than present facts because Twitter did not claim the CID had a “chilling effect” on its free speech at the time.

Twitter then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed the panel’s judgment that the case was constitutionally unripe.

“The issues here are not fit for judicial decision,” wrote Judge Ryan D. Nelson in the opinion, “because Twitter’s allegations do not show that the issuance of the CID is chilling its speech or causing it other cognizable injury that the requested injunction would redress.”

Paxton’s press release claimed the lawsuit was a “thinly-veiled distraction.”

“I’ve been asking Twitter for years to answer questions about its content moderation and large-scale censorship, but Twitter’s only response has been to try and hide behind its bogus lawsuits against me,” he wrote.

“Now that yet another court has ruled in our favor and more details surrounding Twitter’s censorship have come to light, I look forward to helping get to the bottom of any actions that the company took to mislead consumers.”

Musk might want to order his Twitter employees to go ahead and comply with Paxton’s records requests.

After releasing so many details of Twitter’s censorship regime, Musk might think about releasing the memos behind Twitter’s lawsuit strategy under the previous regime…

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Posted in Media Watch, Texas | No Comments »

LinkSwarm for December 24, 2022

Saturday, December 24th, 2022

I just ran out of time to post all the links I had for yesterday’s LinkSwarm, so here’s the rest.

  • “Life expectancy in the US declined by 5% last year, lowest level since 1996.”

    Life expectancy in the United States last year dropped to its lowest point in a quarter century, and it’s not all because of Covid.

    Last year saw a 5% decline in life expectancy for Americans, dropping to under 77 years of age.

    And while some experts want to try to tie the drop to Covid-19, the numbers reveal that there’s much more at work here than people being killed by the China Virus. There’s another epidemic that is killing Americans at an alarming rate: The Opioid Epidemic.

    From the Wall Street Journal:

    Covid-19 was the third-leading cause of death for a second consecutive year in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday, and a rising number of drug-overdose deaths also dragged down life expectancy. Overdose deaths have risen fivefold over the past two decades.

    The death rate for the U.S. population increased by 5%, cutting life expectancy at birth to 76.4 years in 2021 from 77 years in 2020. The CDC in August released preliminary estimates demonstrating a similar decline. Before the pandemic, in 2019, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 78.8 years. The decline in 2020 was the largest since World War II.

    While the drop coincides with the Covid pandemic, the increased numbers aren’t caused by the disease alone.

    The leading cause of death in the US is still heart disease and cancer.

    Then there’s the opioid epidemic.

    The country during the pandemic has recorded more than 1.2 million excess deaths, which is a measure of all deaths beyond prior-year averages and can represent both undercounted Covid-19 deaths and collateral damage from other causes, including more overdoses. The CDC put the final count for 2021 overdose deaths at about 106,700, a record that is 16% higher than the prior year. The final count differs from a preliminary count for last year that topped 108,000 because the CDC in its final counts doesn’t include overdose deaths that occurred among non-U. S. residents.

    Opioid deaths increased because of lockdowns.

    People locked in their homes are more likely to have heart disease.

    Thousands and thousands and thousands of people missed cancer screenings and got lesser treatment thanks to lockdowns.

    As we covered here at NTB recently, the excess deaths we are seeing aren’t because of Covid, but the lockdowns.

  • Speaking of unexpected post-Flu Manchu deaths, Pfizer and Moderna are suing each other.

    n August of this year, I reported that Moderna is suing Pfizer and BioNTech for infringing patents that are key to Moderna’s mRNA technology platform that was used to develop the covid vaccine.

    In response, Pfizer has now countersued Moderna.

    The ongoing legal battle now sees Pfizer and its partner BioNTech reject its rival’s claims it copied the shot.

    Pfizer has accused Moderna of rewriting history, and dubbed its lawsuit ‘revisionist history’.

    Manhattan-based Pfizer requested from a federal court in Boston that Moderna’s lawsuit be dismissed.

    Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, fired back at Moderna on Monday in a patent lawsuit over their rival Covid-19 vaccines.

    They are seeking dismissal of the lawsuit in Boston federal court and an order that Moderna’s patents are invalid and not infringed.

    We need effective biotech companies that are not infected by politics or social justice. Unfortunately, those don’t appear to be the companies we have.

    Pfizer asserts their vaccine technology was arrived at through independent research.

  • Commies never change.

    Everything you need to know about the motives and methods of the 21st-century Left can be learned from studying 20th-century Communism. What Mises said about Marx and Engels, and the ad hominem quality of their rhetoric — slander and insults, rather than actual arguments — was even more true of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, et al. Having once seized power, the Bolsheviks immediately proceeded to suppress all potential rivals. Within a month, they established the Cheka (predecessor of the NKVD and, later, the KGB) and appointed Felix Dzerzhinsky as its leader. Eight months later, the Red Terror began in earnest, and within a matter of weeks, the Bolsheviks had summarily executed more victims than were sentenced to death in the entire preceding century by the Tzarist regime

    Snip.

    The other day I wrote a piece about how the Left can’t argue anymore. My thesis was pretty simple: because they have owned the cultural means of production so long they have lost the need for or ability to argue things logically.

    I still believe that. Having rarely been exposed to a conservative argument that [they] haven’t been able to dismiss merely through repeated ridicule the Left pretty much only engages in ad hominem attacks. Even very smart prominent Lefties . . . seem incapable of doing much more than insulting their opponents any more. It all boils down to Bad Orange Man or MAGA simps. . . .

    But I ran into a slightly different perspective on the matter while cruising Twitter, and I think it deserves consideration: sometimes, at least, the person throwing out an absurd take isn’t actually hoping to convince you of anything. They are, rather, trying to discredit the source and do nothing more. The ad hominem attack is the only point — to destroy the credibility of their opponent, without actually convincing you of any particular argument.

    Thus the need to label anything that refutes The Narrative as “disinformation.”

  • “‘Hyde Amendment’ Equivalent for Gender Modification Filed in Texas House.”

    State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) filed proposed legislation to prohibit state tax dollars from being used to pay for gender modification procedures.

    House Bill 1029 states, “No funds authorized or appropriated by State law shall be expended for any gender reassignment.”

    “Just as the Hyde Amendment, which has enjoyed bipartisan support for almost 50 years, bans tax dollars from funding abortions, I’m proud to file a bill which protects Texans from being forced to pay for their neighbor’s sex change,” Harrison said in a statement. “Irrespective of how anyone views these procedures, it should be uncontroversial that tax money should not fund them.”

    Harrison added that the bill was filed in response to a statement made by President Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra that public money should be used to provide these procedures to those who want them.

  • On the same theme: “Kristi Noem’s Health Department Fires Transgender Group Ahead of ‘Gender Summit.'”

    South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, directed her state Department of Health to terminate a contract with The Transformation Project, a transgender activist group that is hosting a “Gender Identity Summit” next month, after The Daily Signal drew the governor’s attention to the summit and the group.

    “Gov. Kristi Noem is reviewing all Department of Health contracts and immediately terminated a contract with The Transformation Project,” Ian Fury, Noem’s chief of communications, told The Daily Signal on Friday. “The contract was signed without Gov. Noem’s prior knowledge or approval.”

    Fury sent The Daily Signal a copy of the document dissolving the state contract.

    “South Dakota does not support this organization’s efforts, and state government should not be participating in them,” Noem told The Daily Signal in a statement provided by Fury. “We should not be dividing our youth with radical ideologies. We should treat every single individual equally as a human being.”

    Fury said that The Transformation Project had not complied with its state contract. The organization had failed “to submit required quarterly reports for two consecutive quarters,” among other violations.

    All funding to any radical social justice group should be cut, and the people responsible for funding them fired for cause.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Even Sweden is done with the transexual nonsense.

    The very progressive and liberal nation of Sweden is showing that they still have at least a little bit of common sense in health leadership.

    Sweden has decided to cut ties with WPATH, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health because they’re a bunch of activists.

    Swedish health authorities have officially broken ranks with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) with the announcement that gender clinics will no longer be attempting to perform experimental sex changes on under-18s but will instead offer “psychological support to help youth live with the healthy body they were born with.”

    According to an article published in the Swedish medical journal Läkartidningen, new guidelines will be published before the end of the year advising against puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery for under 18s. This is in direct contrast with the WPATH Standards of Care 8 (SOC8) released earlier this year which advises affirmation and medical intervention as the first line of treatment for gender-confused minors.

    Sweden is rejecting these recommendations because it’s clearly an extreme measure to do sex change operations on minors.

    However, the Biden admin has told us that they’re totally on board with the radical recommendations.

  • “Oh look, Biden’s cross-dressing, women’s-luggage-stealing nuclear waste official also helped craft an LGBT school policy adopted by districts around the country.” Maybe we shouldn’t have freaks like Sam Brinton running the asylum.
  • How come a Dalton, GA Walmart has sex toys being sold next to children’s toothbrushes?
  • I’m shocked, shocked to discover that two-time loser Democrat Stacey Abrams is bad with money.

    Despite surpassing her 2018 fundraising record, Stacey Abrams’s 2022 Georgia gubernatorial campaign fell into deep debt due to reckless expenditures, according to staffers and operatives who worked on the failed campaign.

    The campaign still owes more than $1 million to vendors, Abrams campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo confirmed to Axios.

    Some of the campaign’s lavish expenditures included the rental of a home near Piedmont Park in Atlanta, which Abrams envisioned as a “hype house” for TikTok videos but which was ultimately underutilized, staffers told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Some aides occupied the empty large house as a work space. It can now be rented for $12,500 a month, the publication noted.

    The campaign’s youth outreach strategy also proved pricey. Against the better judgement of many staffers, who found the idea irresponsible, Abrams launched a pop-up shop and “swag truck” to hand out merchandise, such as T-shirts and hoodies.

    Abrams burned through cash on polls that ended up being inconsequential and consultants whose contributions were unclear, staffers also said.

    Many employees in the campaign were given generous salaries compared to other candidates’ teams. For example, the campaign advertised paid canvasser jobs at $15 an hour, higher than the typical rate, according to a Georgia Tech blog discovered by the Journal-Constitution.

    Benefitting from glossy, identity-focused coverage, Abrams brought in nearly $98 million as of early November. Yet, her campaign nearly ran out of money in the final stretch. Most of the 180 full-time staffers who worked for her were told they’d receive their last paycheck just a week after Election Day, according to Axios.

  • “‘Walk Away’ Founder Brandon Straka Sues MSNBC Hosts For Defamation Over False Statements.”
  • YouTube bans Pornhub.

    YouTube has banned the official Pornhub account, which boasted more than 900,000 followers, after repeated violations.

    The platform’s move comes in the wake of other Big Tech companies, like Meta/Instagram and TikTok, removing such accounts. Other corporations, like Visa, Mastercard, Roku, Comcast, Unilever, Kraft-Heinz, and PayPal, have also cut ties with Pornhub.

    “Upon review, we terminated the channel Pornhub Official following multiple violations of our Community Guidelines,” YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon said, according to Variety. “We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and channels that repeatedly violate or are dedicated to violative content are terminated.”

    MindGeek, Pornhub’s parent company, has been hit with multiple lawsuits from survivors of child sex trafficking who claim videos of their abuse were platformed on the pornographic site.

  • Dispatches from Generation Eloi: “NYC Students Refuse To Leave Campus Building Until They’re Given All “A” Grades.” I’d not only give them all Fs, I’d erase any earned credits and expel them without a refund. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Texas Legislator Files Prohibition Against Higher Education Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Offices.”

    A ban on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices within institutions of higher education has been filed in the Texas House.

    State Representative-elect Carl Tepper (R-Lubbock) filed House Bill (HB) 1006 that requires higher education institutions in Texas to “foster a diversity of viewpoints [and] maintain political, social, and cultural neutrality.”

    The teeth of the bill command these universities to “demonstrate a commitment to intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” by eliminating DEI offices or anything like them “beyond what is necessary to uphold the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

    It also allows anyone to bring forth civil action against an entity for violation of the prohibition, something Tepper confirmed was modeled after a similar mechanism within the Texas Heartbeat Act.

    Additionally, the definition of “expressive activities” protected under state law is expanded to include “published or unpublished faculty research, lectures, writings, and commentary.”

    Tepper told The Texan, “These offices have been out of control for a while now and people are getting really frustrated with them.”

    Faster, please.

  • Weather update: Some power outages in central Texas, but no more than 2-3 thousand. As of this writing, the outage map only shows 109 homes without power in the Austin area.

    • Merry Christmas!

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    Posted in Austin, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 2 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for December 23, 2022

    Friday, December 23rd, 2022

    Greetings, and welcome to a Christmas Eve Eve LinkSwarm! It got down to 14°F yesterday, and only up to a balmy 30°F or so today. In addition to trying to stay warm, I’ve been working finishing up my latest Lame Excuse Books catalog, which went out earlier this evening. (Drop me a line if you want a copy.) Due to that, I think I’m going to break this LinkSwarm into two parts.

  • House passes pork-filled omnibus spending bill that 18 Republican senators let escape the senate. The amount of bad stuff in here will probably require multiple links tomorrow…
  • The real cause of homelessness in California.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom, newly inaugurated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and legislative leaders are pledging decisive action on California’s homelessness crisis, which raises a pithy question: Why did it erupt during a period of strong economic growth?

    The reasons often offered include a moderate climate, the availability of generous welfare benefits, mental health and drug abuse. However, a lengthy and meticulously sourced article in the current issue of Atlantic magazine demolishes all of those supposed causes.

    Rather, the article argues persuasively, California and other left-leaning states tend to have the nation’s most egregious levels of homelessness because they have made it extraordinarily difficult to build enough housing to meet demands.

    Author Jerusalem Demsas contends that the progressive politics of California and other states are “largely to blame for the homelessness crisis: A contradiction at the core of liberal ideology has precluded Democratic politicians, who run most of the cities where homelessness is most acute, from addressing the issue.

    “Liberals have stated preferences that housing should be affordable, particularly for marginalized groups … But local politicians seeking to protect the interests of incumbent homeowners spawned a web of regulations, laws, and norms that has made blocking the development of new housing pitifully simple.”

    Demsas singles out Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area as examples of how environmentalists, architectural preservationists, homeowner groups and left-leaning organizations joined hands to enact a thicket of difficult procedural hurdles that became “veto points” to thwart efforts to build the new housing needed in prosperous “superstar cities.”

    While thriving economies drew workers to these regions, their lack of housing manifested itself in soaring rents and home prices that drove those on the lower rungs of the economy into homelessness.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Benjamin Netanyahu manages to form new government in Israel. It only took two months since the election!
  • Mayor Adler’s legacy in Austin:

  • Members of Houston rap group The Sauce arrested for making sauce. And by “sauce” I mean “meth.”

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Barnes and Noble to closes 30 stores in 2023…wait, they’re opening 30 stores??? Did I suddenly wake up in 1999?
  • Not news: Buying a used Blazer in El Paso. News: an ex-Cartel Blazer.
  • Lawsuit frees the Eleanors.
  • History matters talks about why the Soviet Union agreed to share control of Berlin with the allies after World War II. Pretty much all the History Matters videos are worth watching, but this one is particularly amusing.
  • “Journalists Warn Of Frightening Trend Where Rules Apply To Them.”
  • Awww:

    I want to know what song is playing on that TV…
    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • Pressed for time, so more links tomorrow…

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    Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Republicans, Supreme Court, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Biden Administration: You’re Not Exporting Any Of That Dirty, Sinful Natural Gas! Ted Cruz: Guess You Don’t Need Any Of These Department Of Energy Nominees Approved, Then. Biden Administration: [Folds]

    Wednesday, December 21st, 2022

    The Biden Administration, in its never-ending quest to punish the oil and gas industry for supplying cheap, reliable energy, tried to block the export of liquefied natural gas to Asia. Then Ted Cruz stepped in.

    The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the approval of permits to export liquefied natural gas to Asia after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) held four agency nominees hostage.

    Two Sempra Energy facilities on the West Coast will now be able to ship Texas-produced liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Asia, increasing the supply that competes with Russia to fuel the rest of the continent. They will also allow the transport of LNG supplies by pipeline to Mexico.

    The approvals come after the Biden administration’s reticence and Cruz’s corresponding holds placed on four nominees to positions in the DOE. Those nominees are David Crane, to work under DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm; Jeffrey Matthew Marootian and Gene Rodrigues, both nominated to serve as assistant secretaries; and Evelyn Wang, up for director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

    A Senate procedural tool, the hold is “an informal practice by which a senator informs Senate leadership that he or she does not wish a particular measure or nomination to reach the floor for consideration.”

    Cruz used a similar maneuver back in May to force permit approvals, including one for a Port Arthur facility.

    “This decision is a long overdue win for Texas and America,” Cruz spokesman Dave Vasquez said in a statement provided to The Texan.

    “These permits will enable West Coast liquefied natural gas export facilities to send U.S. natural gas from Texas and other Western states by pipeline to Mexico, and from there export the LNG to Asia. As a result, American allies and partners in Asia will have access to newer and cleaner alternatives to the coercive energy blackmail pushed by Russia and China.”

    The permits will enable the cheaper sale of Texas LNG supply to Asia; it also enables shippers to avoid the congested Panama Canal, thus expediting the supply. In total, the two permits will allow the exchange of 2.33 trillion cubic feet per year of LNG.

    In 2021, Texas producers generated 10.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

    It’s good to have a senator on your side that knows how to play the game…

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    Posted in Regulation, Republicans, Texas | 5 Comments »

    Another Cold Blast Heading To Texas

    Tuesday, December 20th, 2022

    Real winter weather in central Texas rarely starts around the nominal start of the season (which officially begins here in Austin at 3:48 PM tomorrow (December 21st)), but this year an arctic blast is barrelling down on us Thursday.

    The Arctic air is forecast to arrive Thursday morning into the afternoon. Temperatures will drop sharply — possibly by as much as 40° in just two hours behind the frontal passage. By Thursday evening, temperatures drop below freezing then plunge into the single-digits and teens Friday morning.

    I’m not yet seeing single digit forecasts on my phone app yet, but 14°F is damn cold enough.

    Wind gusts of 30-40 mph Thursday night through Friday morning are likely to drop wind chills below zero in some areas — capable of causing frostbite in 30-45 minutes and likely prompting our second-ever Wind Chill Warning. The first of these warnings was issued in Feb. 2021.

    With three consecutive hard freezes in our forecast Friday morning through Christmas morning, it is imperative you take steps to protect your pets, pipes, plants and people. Temperatures finally start to warm Christmas Day and the following day.

    Follow the below tips from Austin Water to protect your home’s plumbing:

    1. Protect Indoor Faucets. Open cabinets beneath kitchen and bathroom sinks to allow warmer air to circulate around pipes. Be sure to remove any toxic substances located in these cabinets if there are children or pets living in the residence.
    2. Drip Only if Needed. After the measures above are taken, drip one cold-water faucet slowly if you feel your pipes may still freeze. The faucet you choose should be the one that is the greatest distance from your main shutoff valve. It does not need to be a running trickle. If you do drip your faucet, capture the water for future use.
    3. Power Outages. If you experience a power outage for more than 24 hours, stop dripping your faucets and turn off your water at the meter.

    Because we’re not expected to get snow and ice, hopefully we can avoid widespread power outages this time, but if not, here’s the Austin power outage map.

    With cold weather due Thursday, there’s still time to get in an Amazon order to prepare. So here (again) are a few cold weather prep items you might find useful:

  • Faucet Covers. If you’re a homeowner, you probably already have those, but if not, here they are, and they seem to work better than a rag or dripping the faucet, and neither of my faucets busted in the ice storm. That link goes to the cheap Styrofoam version, but these plastic ones look a bit bigger and stronger.
  • O’Keeffe’s Working Hands cream: I walk my dogs 2-3 times a day pretty much every single day of the year, and I found my hands getting cracked and raw in the cold, even through gloves. O’Keeffe’s Working Hands fixed the problem. I frequently give this stuff out as Christmas gifts.
  • Carmex lip balm. A small, cheap jar that solves the chapped lips problem in winter. I know some people prefer Chapstick, but to me the main result of using Chapstick is that 30 minutes later you fell a need to use more Chapstick.
  • Kerasal Intensive Foot Repair for cracked and painful feet. More info here. Podiatrist recommended!
  • De-icing spray. You can stand there for 15 minutes ineffectually scraping your frozen windows like William H. Macy in Fargo, or you can keep a bottle of this in your trunk.
  • Water leak detector: A lot of people don’t have these, but I consider them essential basic gear, as they can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars in water damage. Usual made in China caveats apply, but it’s very simple tech (two parallel wires on the exterior that water closes the circuit and sets off when wet). That link goes to a 5-pack, because I recommend putting one behind every toilet, under every sink you use, under your water heater, and next to your washing machine (I’ve had mine start rocking for an unbalanced load that pulled the drain hose loose). (There’s an even cheaper five pack from another manufacturer (also made in China) that I have no experience with.)
  • Flashlights. I have an old bulb-type Maglite, but here’s a pretty close equivalent with LEDs. As a bonus, it’s also heavy enough to conk someone out. I have flashlights in my bedroom, my kitchen and in my car’s glovebox. The highest rated flashlight on Amazon is the Streamlight 75458 Stinger DS, which is about four times as expensive as the Maglite. I assume it’s brighter and with a longer life, and maybe you have a use case that justifies the cost. And if you have flashlights, chances are you’ll also need…
  • Batteries. The Maglite takes D-Cells, and you’re going to want, at a minimum, enough to reload every flashlight twice, which should be enough to get you through a couple of evenings of power outages. Check your flashlights every six months when you check your smoke and CO detectors. Speaking of which, those and the water leak detectors take 9 volt batteries, and you want enough around to be able to change out every battery in your detectors as needed. Those links go to Duracells, which I’ve been pretty happy with. Sam’s and Lowes frequently have cheaper bulk deals, so check there if you’re out and about.
  • Gas And Water Emergency Shut Off Tool. The Orbit 26097 provides a water shutoff valve, a gas shutoff valve, manhole cover lift tool, and a rubberized grip. You need one of these for the same reason you need a water leak detector, i.e. it will greatly limit damage before the plumber gets there. One caveat: I used one last week to cut off the water in advance of a new washer being installed (just in case the ancient water valves in the laundry room started leaking) and the manhole cover part of the tool broke off when I was moving the manhole back into place. The rest is still good, but quality metal shouldn’t snap like that. I’ll have to dig out the warranty info for a replacement.
  • Sawyer Products Water Filtration System: If you’ve ever been under a water boil notice, the Sawyer system is Good Enough to get you through, even if it is a slight pain to fill and squeeze the bag enough times for my dogs and I to drink (but still less of a pain that boiling water and waiting for it to cool).
  • Duct tape is useful to have year-round, but especially during an emergency, to patch a small leak or keep something together until the emergency is over and you can replace it. Link goes to 3M all-weather duct tape, which is better than the generic stuff for outside tasks, like sealing around the edge of a faucet cover.

    • Stay warm…

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    Posted in Austin, Texas | 7 Comments »

    Texas Nurse Practitioner Sues VA Over Being Forced To Support Abortions

    Thursday, December 15th, 2022

    Abortion (especially taxpayer-funded abortion) is one of the most sacred sacraments of the modern Democratic Party, and it thus wants to force everyone in medicine (especially Christians) to bow to its Holy of Hollies. And every time Democrats control the executive branch, they try to force their ideology down other people’s throats, so the Biden Administration has decided to use the Veterans Administration to promote its absolutist abortion position.

    One Texas nurse is having none of that.

    A Texas nurse practitioner has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Waco against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for its rule requiring its medical facilities to provide abortions and abortion counseling.

    Stephanie Carter, who has worked as a nurse practitioner at the Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple for 23 years, sought a religious accommodation from participating in abortions.

    According to the complaint filed by religious freedom legal defense group First Liberty, Carter was told no process for such an accommodation existed.

    “The VA officials explained on October 11 that Ms. Carter would have to prescribe medications to end certain first trimester pregnancies if she did not have an approved religious accommodation,” the complaint asserts.

    Carter claims that the VA is substantially burdening her freedom to exercise her religious beliefs in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

    Good for Carter. Also, I want to note that, 50 years ago, the phrase “VA Hospital-provided abortions” would have been inexplicable to men serving in the military…

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    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Dear National Review: El Paso Is Not A “Town”

    Tuesday, December 13th, 2022

    It’s not only the liberal mainstream media that screws up through parochial ignorance; sometimes the establishment conservative media does as well.

    Today’s headline example from National Review: “Massive Weekend Migrant Caravan Overwhelms Texas Border Town.”

    The name of that border “town”? El Paso.

    You know, the 24th largest city in the United States.

    The story is otherwise solid:

    Over the weekend, a massive caravan of thousands of illegal migrants, mostly from Nicaragua, crossed the border into West Texas in a stunning surge that shocked immigration agents, neighboring towns, and state officials.

    By Monday, over 5,000 illegal immigrants had arrived at the Border Patrol’s central processing center in El Paso, Texas, officials told the New York Times. They estimated that about 2,000 people came to the U.S. each day, with the largest influx reaching 800 to 1,000 migrants on Sunday night.

    State Senator César J. Blanco, who represents the region, argued that the situation is untenable, with El Paso, a community with limited capacity, being forced to accommodate scores of migrants regularly.

    “We’re feeling it. It’s straining resources,” he told the publication, noting that El Paso has functioned as an Ellis Island but for illegal immigration. “Whether we want it or not, it is.”

    El Paso’s predicament, which included 53,000 apprehensions in October alone, is the worst among U.S.-Mexico border towns, although all are bearing the brunt of the raging border crisis. So far in 2022, there have been 2,378,944 migrant encounters along the southern border, according to immigration data.

    Homeless shelters in El Paso are flooded, as is the processing center, which typically releases the migrants into the interior with instruction to return for a future court date, which many do not oblige.

    It’s obvious that the Biden Administration wants to cram as many illegal aliens as possible into America to amnesty them as future Democratic Party voters.

    But how parochial do you have to be to call El Paso a “town”? I’m pretty sure nobody on the NRO staff would call Yonkers, NY or Worcester, MA (both considerably smaller municipalities) a “town.”

    Maybe they just listened to Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” (“Out in the West Texas town of El Paso/I fell in love with a Mexican girl”) and didn’t realize how much it had grown since the cowboy heydays…

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    Posted in Border Control, Media Watch, Texas | 6 Comments »

    Dispatches From The War Against Child Genital Mutilation

    Monday, December 12th, 2022

    For some reason, Democratic Party elites have gone all-in on forcing radical transexism down America’s throats. Fortunately, there are promising signs of widespread resistance to mutilating children for the approval of radical social justice warriors.

    First, courts blocked the Biden Administration’s creepy regulatory attempt to force hospitals to conduct child genital mutilation.

    A federal court on Friday blocked a Biden administration mandate that would force religious hospitals and doctors to facilitate gender transitions against their sincerely held moral convictions.

    The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to block enforcement of the rule on the grounds that “intrusion upon the Catholic Plaintiffs’ exercise of religion is sufficient to show irreparable harm,” the filing reads.

    Catholic nuns, clinics, a university, and hospitals were among the plaintiffs in the case, represented by the Becket Fund. The plaintiffs all provide medical care for transgender patients but refuse to provide gender-transition surgeries because they believe them to be harmful. Their grant of permanent injunctive relief from the lower court was preserved Friday.

    Friday’s ruling, which originated in North Dakota, is one of a twin set of cases challenging the Biden mandate. The second, which originated in Texas, was decided in August by the Fifth Circuit court, which also permanently blocked the rule. The plaintiffs in the Texas case included Christian medical associations of thousands of doctors who are now protected from federal encroachment into their practices.

    “We now have two different federal court of appeals saying the Biden administration is permanently blocked from forcing religious doctors and hospitals” to perform gender transitions in violation of their conscience, Luke Goodrich, attorney with the Becket Fund, said during a call with reporters.

    Litigation was first initiated in 2016 over implementation of Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an antidiscrimination clause that would have compelled religious medical institutions that receive federal funding to perform and cover gender transitions, according to the plaintiffs. Section 1557 prohibits a federally funded or administered health program or activity from denying benefits to an individual on the basis of sex as outlined in Title IX. The Biden administration doubled down on the 2016 principle in a revised rule.

    Second, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky brings the wood.

    In an appearance on The Ingraham Angle, Paul raised the issue of doctors carrying out transgender surgeries on children, and the propaganda that has prompted a massive increase in Americans feeling they do not have the ‘right’ body.

    “Who is responsible for telling a four-year-old that we need to talk about their gender and whether they’re in the appropriate body?” Paul asked.

    “Who’s talking about giving picture books to six-year-olds with illustrations of surgery to remove their genitalia?” the Senator continued.

    “It’s Democrat politicians and woke left-wing people,” Paul asserted.

    “There’s not one Republican — look, Republicans are not perfect. But Republicans are not pushing your child to have surgery to remove their genitalia as early as elementary school. No Republican is pushing this,” Paul reiterated.

    “These are crazy left-wing Democrats. It was also crazy left-wing Democrats who were for the lockdown across America,” Paul continued.

    The mad enthusiasm for transexism is going to be as inexplicable to future generations as pet rocks or healing crystals.

    Except neither of those trends mutilated children for life.

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    Posted in Crime, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 4 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for December 8, 2022

    Friday, December 9th, 2022

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! I still haven’t had time to wrangle all those Twitter revelations into a coherent article, so that will have to wait for another post.
    

  • Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has announced that she will leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent.
  • “Most Voters Share GOP Concerns About ‘Botched’ Arizona Election.”
  • Flu Manchu lockdowns were all for naught.

    How different it feels this time around. Broadcasters are lustily cheering anti-lockdown protesters in China. Members of Congress offer unqualified support. President Joe Biden, although more guarded, is sympathetic.

    No Western politician, as far as I can see, is insulting the protesters. They are not dismissed as selfish or sociopathic, nor as dupes of conspiracy theories. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) captured the mood: “To the people of China — we hear you and we stand with you as you fight for your freedom.”

    Broadcasters and columnists who spent 2020 calling anti-lockdowners kooks and criminals are now uncomplicatedly applauding their Chinese counterparts. They see ordinary people standing up against an authoritarian government the anti-COVID policies of which were crushing liberty.

    So, what changed? Perhaps pundits tell themselves that the disease is less virulent now, or that vaccination has altered the balance of risk, or that, in some other way, Beijing’s crackdown is less proportionate than those of 2020. But none of these explanations stacks up.

    Yes, the coronavirus became less lethal. All viruses that spread through human contact eventually become less lethal because they have an evolved tendency to want to keep their hosts up and active and therefore more infectious. For this to happen, they require a critical mass. Enough people need to be incapacitated or killed by the original version to give milder strains an advantage. And, yes, the vaccines helped, too.

    But the trade-offs are essentially the same in China today as they were three years ago — coronavirus deaths versus other deaths. The current unrest was sparked by a fire in Xinjiang, which was allowed to become needlessly deadly because the authorities were following COVID protocols. In other words, they were elevating COVID above other forms of harm.

    Most countries did the same in 2020 with, as we now see, disastrous results. The lockdowns did not just cause an economic meltdown from which we will take years to recover. They also failed on their own terms. They killed more people than they saved.

    Guess which developed country had the lowest excess mortality between 2020 and 2022. Go on, have a guess. That’s right. Sweden, which refused to close shops or schools or to impose a mask mandate, saw cumulative excess deaths rise by 6.8%, the lowest figure in the OECD. By way of comparison, the equivalent figures were 18% in Australia, 24.5% in the U.K., and 54.1% in the U.S.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “The “Crazy, Right-Wing Shooter” Myth.”
  • “The Biden Administration Wants Taxpayers to Pay for Transgender Child Mutilation.” Of course they do. Every knee must bend. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Loudoun County Fires Superintendent over Handling of Sexual-Assault Cases. The Loudoun County school board fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler in a closed-door meeting Tuesday night after a special grand jury released a report blaming the district for failing to escalate cases of student sexual assault in 2021.” The black-pilled who proclaim that electing Republicans is useless aren’t considering the Glenn Youngkins of the world.
  • “New Washington Post Communications Chief Moonlights as Board Member of Far-Left Activist Group.”

    he Washington Post announced in October that it was welcoming a new communications chief. The paper’s official announcement lauded Kathy Baird, a veteran of Nike and the public relations giant Ogilvy, as a “key strategic partner” positioned to “realize our ambitious vision for the publication.”

    It also noted her membership in the “Rosebud Sioux Tribe” and service on the board of IllumiNative, which it described as “a nonprofit working for accurate and authentic portrayal of Native people.”

    That’s one way to put it. IllumiNative is a self-described “racial justice organization” funded by a dark money behemoth that encourages elementary school students to fight for Democratic Party initiatives like universal health care. Its purpose is similar to various far-left activist groups, focusing on “breaking through systems of white supremacy” and “grassroots organizing,” according to IllumiNative’s website.

  • Related: “Washington Post Hemorrhages 500,000 Subscribers In Biden Era.”
  • Argentina’s Vice President (and former President, and former First Lady) and leftwing Paronist Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is sentenced to six years of corrupt fraud.
  • Paralympian: “Hey, can I get a wheelchair ramp?” Veterans Affairs Canada: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like assisted suicide instead?” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Michael Avenatti Gets 14-Year Sentence For Stealing Millions From Clients.” Remember the entirety of the leftwing media slobbering over this creepy crook for years? Let’s roll the tape again.

  • “Suspended Smith County Constable [Curtis Harris] Found Guilty of Theft, Official Oppression. Since his indictment, the 34-year-old Democrat has been jailed for violating the conditions of his bond and removed from office by a judge.” Smith County is in northeast Texas, and the biggest city is Tyler. Not to be confused with Deaf Smith County, which is completely different…
  • Carvana declares bankruptcy, is $7 billion in debt. “This will not have a happy ending.”
  • San Francisco decides to backtrack on their bomb-carrying killer robot idea.
  • “Nation Relieved To No Longer Have To Pretend To Like Soccer.”
  • “Fun New ‘Antifa On The Shelf’ Doll Burns Down Different Part Of Your House Every Night.”
  • Bad dog! (Or, really, bad owner.) (Hat tip: Ted Cruz’s Facebook feed.))
  • Great Pyrenees watchdog fights off 11 coyotes, killing eight. Good boy! I didn’t realize there were coyotes in Georgia, but evidently they’ve been extending their range from the southwest.

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, video | 8 Comments »

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