Is Greg Abbott trying to become Donald Trump III? He can’t be Donald Trump II because Senator Ted Cruz holds that title.
Once again, Governor Greg Abbott brings out the absolute worst in Texas. He just can’t stop playing the fear card whenever opportunity knocks. Last time he bashed Syrian refugees, demanding that they be barred from relocating in Texas because some of them might be terrorists. The Governor is a lawyer and he knows fully well that refugees go through a complete and thorough screening that takes nearly two years. He also knows that as Governor he does not have the authority to ban refugees from the state. A federal judge made it clear. Twice. To both the Governor and Attorney General, an indicted felon, Ken Paxton.
The (state) has failed to show by competent evidence that any terrorists actually have infiltrated the refugee program, much less that these particular refugees are terrorists intent on causing harm," U.S. District Judge David Godbey wrote in a brief ruling just two hours after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested an emergency order barring the refugees.
Competence evidence is the key here. I am sure the Attorney General presented voodoo gibberish and junk evidence to support his case.
While a federal judge stopped the Governor and Attorney General from closing our doors, the hateful message was not lost on a group of xenophobic crack pots in N. Texas. And so a Muslim family who recently settled in Plano have been attacked on a nightly basis.
Texans begin nightly smashing of windows of Muslim family. Six weeks after they moved in.
I am at a loss for words to describe these hateful attackers. Imagine how horrible it is for a family that just recently moved into a neighborhood near a mosque to have to live in fear every night of the week. The kids are understandably terrified. There has been an increase in attacks on Muslim families in N. Texas since the tragedies in Paris and more recently in San Bernardino, CA. And lawmakers like Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz are doing nothing to inject calm leadership in frightened communities. Au contraire.
Donald Trump’s hate rhetoric to ban all Muslims, including U.S. citizens abroad, from entering the U.S., has certainly dragged every racist xenophobe out from their rat holes.
Of course when Trump went over the top, as usual, our Republican Governor jumped on the GOP band wagon to call Trump out for blasting his deafening fog horns on Muslims. While the Governor blew his own dog whistles.
"Trump's wrong," Abbott told anchor Bill Hemmer on Fox News, insisting that "the real threat here" are radicalized Islamic terrorists, not all Muslims.
When asked about his attempts to ban Syrian refugees from Texas, Abbott dodged the question.
Asked about his own push to block Syrian refugees from coming into Texas -- a move that federal officials have sidestepped by getting refugee agencies to accept them anyway -- Abbott deflected a direct answer by asserting that the Obama administration needs to better investigate the refugees for terrorist ties.
So, when interviewed, Greg Abbott pretends to be reasonable where refugee families are concerned, but his rhetoric clear and unforgiving. He actually threatened to sue the charities and social services that resettle refugees.
His tweet, knowing fully well that the Governor does not have the authority to prevent refugee relocation
follows.
For the record, and the Governor knows this but he could not avoid the urge to throw himself out there with other right wing Republican fear mongers and hate talk radio hosts.
Once a refugee is admitted to the United States, he or she is legally present here. States and governors have no more power to bar them from entering than they could bar entry to a U.S. citizen.
Meanwhile in Washington D.C. the junior Senator from the once great state of Texas, Ted Cruz is sounding his own fog horns on Syrian refugees. Ted Cruz introduces bill to allow states to opt out of Syrian refugee plan.
The legislation will "protect the authority of the states and the authority of governors to keep their citizens safe," he said.
If we want to be safe the best thing we could do is make sure Governor Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz are not re-elected when their terms are up.
A recent editorial in the Houston Chronicle demanded for Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott to stop fear mongering the Syrian refugee situation.
According to Abbott, Paxton and other Republican office-holders, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Reps. Ted Poe and Randy Weber, they may well be secret agents here to wreak havoc in our fair city.
These boys never miss the opportunity to foment fear whenever possible, even it means throwing the state’s values into the toilet for political gain. For these craven clowns have to keep their tea party base revved up with hate and fear 24/7. There always has to be a bogeyman or an evil doing “other” of some sort.
Even W.’s former head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, a neoconservative, said there is little to fear about the incoming refugees.
"If you were trying to insert an operational terrorist into the United States, having them sit for 18 months to two years on the hope that they could fool everybody and get in, would, I think, probably not be the most operationally attractive thing for a terrorist leader."
Naturally the mean-spirited opportunists ignored the former Director of Homeland Security, a member of their own party. And I am sure a blistering from the state’s biggest newspaper’s editorial board did not give them pause either.
But to reject out of hand the very people who have suffered the most at the hands of terrorists not only betrays our values but also provides just the type of propaganda ammunition that ISIS and its psychotic ilk crave. Texas, home from its beginnings to refugees from around the world - including more Muslims today than any other state - is bigger than that, braver than that. Taking their cue from religious groups, resettlement agencies and countless everyday Texans, it's time for our elected officials to forget the fear-mongering and begin to reflect bedrock Texas values.
While the likes of Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz give a wink and a nod to Donald Trump while he does their dirty work of trashing Mexicans, Black Lives Matter and now Muslims, these two cowardly opportunists pretend to be more moderate and reasonable.
Don’t be fooled. Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz are the same league as Donald Trump.