The Texas Taliban, (TX GOP) should be charged with manslaughter... at a minimum
MAGA's assault on women
Dear readers,
I wish everyone the very best for your weekend. I will though add this caveat; considering next Tuesday’s election, a great weekend will come with the obstacle of deep anxiety for most Americans. For me it is the same. Over the decades, I have developed a steadfast and effective tactic to deal with such situations, and that is to, get off my hindquarters and do something about it. This is in many ways, why I began writing this publication in the first place. Well friends, today’s piece will not be the one I intended to write but is something I must write, after catching a headline in one of my news feeds this morning. Another dead woman in Texas, due to Greg Abbott’s and his Texas Taliban’s (TX GOP) draconian and vigilante war on women.
Apparently, “hot wheels” a pejorative many Texans regardless of political affiliation call Abbott, doesn’t give a damn about women, their rights nor their healthcare. This is nothing new, but since their passage of our punitive abortion law a couple of years ago, the situation for women in Texas, has turned deadly.
As long-time readers know, I quite often write about Texas as a way to illustrate to other citizens around the nation, just what MAGA governance looks like, and it’s getting worse by the day. If you live in a deep red state, you already understand the un-American MAGA ideology that governs you and what it means in your everyday life. For those living in blue states, the daily headlines in Texas papers often look like something from a dystopian novel, but tragically, it is all too real. When I read stories like this morning’s about Josseli Barnica, I realize that here in TX and states like Florida, Georgia and several others, being a woman doesn’t only come with a deadly risk, but countless other risks and hardships, including the denial of basic human rights and healthcare.
That hot wheels and Ted Cruz type Republicans would impose these risks on the women in their own family, puts teeth into the old saying, “they would sell their own mothers, wives and daughters, if it helped them get elected.” As if we needed more proof, today’s GOP, national, state or local, is a far-right extremist movement called MAGA, not a political party. Considering my long and deep experience in CT or counterterrorism, I never use the word “extremist,” frivolously. So long as the GOP agenda is exclusively MAGA, every single R vote, is for far-right extremism. There is zero “principled conservatism left in today’s Republican Party.
Whether it is Greg Abbott, Project 2025, the 2024 GOP Platform or Trump, women are in the crosshairs. For example, in analysis of Project 2025 by the esteemed, Center for Reproductive Rights.org, they demonstrate five primary devastating impacts, regarding women’s reproductive health. All of this already exists in Texas. They are:
1. End medication abortion—used in 63% of abortions in the U.S.—by revoking FDA approval of abortion drugs. 2. Allow hospitals to deny emergency, life-saving abortion care to pregnant patients in crisis. 3. Prosecute people for shipping and transporting of abortion pills and supplies. 4. Permit extremists to harass abortion clinic staff and patients without consequence. 5. Establish an abortion surveillance system that forces states to report the intricate, personal details of all patients receiving abortion care. - The Top 5 Ways Project 2025 Would Destroy Abortion Access - Center for Reproductive Rights - September 18, 2024
Some of the most nefarious legislation in Texas also seeks to invade the privacy of women regarding the most intimate aspects of their lives, among these, access to women’s health records if the state suspects that they have left the state for an abortion. Just last month, our felonious AG, Ken Paxton sued the Federal Government for attempting to protect the privacy of women and their families’ health records.
Remember, it’s not Texas women who are criminally liable for seeking abortions or even medical opinions regarding their specific medical cases that may require an abortion for the safety of the woman. All of this is part of SB8 passed by the Texas Legislature in 2021. It is those who transport, provide support for or even recommend traveling out of state for an abortion. Women and their families though can be “turned in” by family, neighbors or others who suspect them of discussing and taking steps toward an abortion. SB8 is quite accurately called, a vigilante abortion law. Those who turn them or their family members in can receive rewards for a successful prosecution. This includes a payment of not less than $10,000 plus court fees.
Below are just a few of the news stories regarding hot wheels and the Texas Taliban’s approach to women’s reproductive health. The stories below come from the Pulitzer Prize winning and non-partisan, Texas Tribune. There are hundreds more archived stories on this topic in their archives.
For pregnant patients, abortion restrictions threaten care | The Texas Tribune
Texas officials want to cut millions in funding for women's health services | The Texas Tribune
Texas woman blocked from getting emergency abortion by court leaves state | The Texas Tribune
Half of TX Women Face Barriers to Reproductive Health | The Texas Tribune
It is not just the mother’s health that is at stake in draconian states like Texas. In a research project by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted for the first year after Texas passed SB8, infant deaths also increased at roughly 10 times the national rate.
As if abusive vigilante abortion laws weren’t enough, then there is the TX GOP obsession with all issues regarding gender. Heaven help a family that must deal with any gender related issues for their children or other family members. The TX GOP believes that everyone must be straight, married and bear children. They do not recognize any medically respected diagnosis regarding gender other than straight. For that matter, the national GOP is no different.
What most Americans refuse to understand is that all gender issues are part of a global, far-right extremist ideology, centered on Putin’s Russia. In the past nearly two decades, Russian far-right ideology has been exported globally just as aggressively as the Soviets exported communism. It took hold in its worst forms somewhere around 2012-2017, but still is an extremely powerful force around the world. As I wrote not long ago, MAGA is defined as a movement built upon Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and Violent Extremism.
Russia exports her Putinist Ideology via their statecraft and via influence operations such as their efforts to elect Trump in 2016, 2020 and now, next week. All gender related issues are adopted in far-right governed nations, all around the world, such as Hungary, Serbia, Iran etc. They may not embrace the White Christian Nationalism but if you switch the Word Christian to Hindu (In India, this is called Hindutva) or Shia Islam, the ideology is synonymous. Cultural conservatism, the will to avoid a hedonism that is Western in origin, is the fourth tenet of official ideology. Russians are conscious of their own cultural roots, the argument goes, whereas some Europeans (including the West in general) have lost theirs, as reflected by their embrace of homosexuality, feminism, trans rights, multiculturalism, and “militaristic secularism,” not to mention their subservience to the United States. Russians are different, proponents of the ideology argue, or at least they should be. They may not be churchgoers, but they would like to think of themselves as churchgoers. They do not subscribe to a nontraditional understanding of gender or sexuality, seeing the heterosexual nuclear family as the norm. Putin speaks for these Russians. He also speaks for their patriotism and their love of country, whether this love is rooted in the Russian language, in Russian culture, or in Russian (and at times Soviet or neo-Soviet) historical memory—the narrative of victimization and heroism that is presumed to describe modern Russian history. A doctrinal assertion of these reactionary sentiments is contained within the Russian National Security Strategy. It affirms the importance of resisting cultural colonization, which is presented as a grave or even existential threat to the Russian nation. The threat can only be resisted by preserving and strengthening Russian identity. - The Ideology of Putinism - Center for Strategic and International Studies - By Maria Snegovaya, Michael Kimmage, and Jade McGlynn - September 2023
Implementing Putinesque ideology here in Texas and the US generally, takes many forms. In regard to women’s rights and all things gender related, different MAGA elements like the TX Taliban, pursue imposition of right-wing extremist onto all citizens. For example, please see the quote below, also from the Texas Tribune.
In the months since Texas outlawed abortion and prohibited adolescents from receiving gender-transition care, women have flooded abortion clinics in nearby states and parents with transgender children have moved to places where puberty blockers and hormone therapy remain legal. So now, Texas conservatives are testing the limits of their power beyond state lines. Some cities and counties have passed so-called travel bans aimed at stopping Texans from driving to abortion appointments in other states. Meanwhile, Attorney General Ken Paxton has demanded medical records from at least two out-of-state clinics that provide gender-affirming care to minors. “This request from the Texas Attorney General is a clear attempt to intimidate providers of gender-affirming care and parents and families seeking that care outside of Texas and other states with bans,” Dr. Izzy Lowell, a Georgia physician who received one such demand letter, said in a statement. - Texas conservatives test how far they can extend abortion and gender-transition restrictions beyond state lines - Texas Tribune - By Eleanor Klibanoff and William Melhado - February 2024
Now that we have covered what the Texas GOP is doing and in conjunction with the rest of today’s MAGA GOP, and that is built on the collective vision of Russian and US extreme, right-wing ideology, let’s begin to wrap up this essay.
First, let’s take one more look at mortality rates in Texas compared to the rest of the US. The data and quotes below are for the period 2019-2022 and are even far worse than the Johns Hopkins report discussed earlies.
As a girl dad, that has countless women among family and friends in my world, I cannot possibly imagine any sensible legislator believing that it is moral, to impose potentially lethal health risks and ability to manage their own reproductive rights onto any of them. In fact, just the thought of this, stands in sharp contrast to the phrase, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If a doctor or other healthcare professional can be imprisoned for honoring their Hippocratic Oath, then all morality has been drained from the MAGA GOP, that has imposed this on them.
In street terms, hot wheels, AG Paxton, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House leader, Dade Phelan continue to suck up to the greater MAGA movement, where all social/ political climbers are in a race to be the most immoral and unconstitutional. They falsely claim to be more, “conservative.” This is a ridiculous joke since that not one damn thing in Austin, pertains to the principled conservatism of President Eisenhower, who I consider the pinnacle of principled conservatism. A close review of Ike’s presidential platform in 1956 as opposed to the Texas GOP platform, makes a mockery of the TX GOP. There isn’t one thing compatible… yes, you read that right… not one damn thing. In fact, Ike’s platform looks a great deal like President Biden’s now and much the same as VP Harris is running on.
I have spent nearly three years deployed in combat zones fighting against violent extremists. Not once did it ever occur to me that I would come home and have to do so again, against American citizens pretending to be patriotic but instead worship a rapist, traitor, insurrections and conman felon, whose whole persona is based on a violent extremist ideology little different from the Taliban, ISIS, AQ and the rest of the bunch. That these violent extremists would impose Talibanesque ideology on my wife, dear friends, daughters, aunts, cousins, etc. is unthinkable.
I will tell you this and with absolute certainty, history will be very unkind to those who wear their little red hats while pursuing a grotesque version of Putinish and American far-right extremism. They impose this unremovable stain onto their families too. Can you imagine being saddled with the family shame, of MAGA votes from relatives? Like the Civil War, the shame imposed on Texas will take generations to wash off or fade. God help the women suffering under this great American affliction called MAGA. Even more importantly, let’s hope that our wives, daughters, relatives and friends just survive hot wheels and the rest of the Texas Taliban.
I will leave you with this, next Tuesday is about morality vs. the absence of. It has nothing to do with left/right politics, R vs. D or liberal versus conservative. Choose wisely. I did yesterday with my vote.
My very best to all,
Paul