It's Christmas Eve and about 50 migrants were dropped off in front of Kamala Harris' residence with the temperature in the teens. Another stunt by Greg Abbott. pic.twitter.com/wUjkxplYmB
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) December 25, 2022
… And Jesus should bring His clue-by-four. Because this is not how Abbott’s proclaimed Savior instructed His followers to treat needy strangers. Especially as part of the commemoration of that Savior’s birth to needy travellers in a strange city!
CNN:
Several busloads of migrants were dropped off in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington, DC, on Christmas Eve in 18 degree weather late Saturday.
An initial two busloads were taken to local shelters, according to an administration official. More buses arrived outside the vice president’s residence later Saturday evening. A CNN team saw migrants being dropped off, with some migrants wearing only T-shirts in the freezing weather. They were given blankets and put on another bus that went to a local church.
Amy Fischer, a volunteer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, which has been receiving migrants sent to DC since the spring, said the organization had been prepared for Saturday night’s arrivals, having been informed about it earlier by an NGO working at the border in Texas.
The arrivals included asylum seekers from Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru and Colombia, according to Fischer, who told CNN the buses were supposed to go to New York but were diverted to DC due to the weather. Busloads of migrants have been arriving in Washington weekly since April…
“Governor Abbott abandoned children on the side of the road in below freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any Federal or local authorities,” White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan said in a statement.
“As we have repeatedly said, we are willing to work with anyone – Republican or Democrat alike – on real solutions, like the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures President Biden sent to Congress on his first day in office, but these political games accomplish nothing and only put lives in danger,” Hasan said.
Abbott is one of at least three Republican governors who have taken credit for busing or flying migrants north this year to protest the Biden administration’s immigration policies. He previously confirmed in September that his state had sent the buses to Harris’ residence at that time.
….and based on they can’t even lie and claim they were unaware of how bad the weather was getting. https://t.co/NTRyvkUzy8
— Panda Bernstein (@J4Years) December 25, 2022
The Texas Tribune:
… In a letter to Biden on Tuesday, Abbott said the state is ill-equipped to house thousands of migrants who are coming into the country. Abbott also acknowledged the cold temperatures in Texas.
“Your policies will leave many people in the bitter, dangerous cold as the polar vortex moves into Texas,” Abbott wrote. The letter does not mention plans to send more buses of migrants to Harris’ home.
El Paso declared a state of emergency last week in response to freezing temperatures and shelters being unable to house all of the migrants. On Friday night, the City Council extended that declaration for 30 days.
On Christmas morning, members of the Texas National Guard constructed a barbed-wire fence at the El Paso border. In a tweet, Abbott said he was grateful to them for serving on Christmas Day.
Additionally he can quote all he wants but one who claims faith without deeds is dead (James 2:20). Pretty sure Jesus didn’t ask him to ship the poor and needy off at Christmas with nothing into the cold to own the libs. Jesus said to welcome them and provide love and care.
— Ginger Zoe ???? ???????? (@ZoePerdue) December 25, 2022
“The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." — Leviticus 19:34 https://t.co/xZK2laPET9
— steven ''italian elon musk'' monacelli (@stevanzetti) December 25, 2022
Ksmiami
Charge Abbott with human trafficking and arrest his sorry ass. Monster.
Redshift
On top of everything else cruel and dickish about this, the VP’s residence isn’t near anything but some residential areas and embassies. It’s basically dumping them by the side of a fairly busy city road.
Arclite
The funny thing is that the people perpetrating this stunt consider themselves Christian. Without realizing of course that the baby Jesus had to flee Bethlehem for Egypt with his parents or be murdered by King Herod. Jesus was literally an illegal immigrant fleeing persecution, much like these folks. It would be one thing if these people didn’t claim to be Christian, but they never shut up about it.
rikyrah
The man is a phucking demon😠😠
Ruckus
@Arclite:
Like a lot of things they aren’t – humane, intelligent, they are in no way christian. I don’t believe but I’ve studied a lot of religions to see what they were all about. Some of them seem to actually believe in the teachings they pontificate about and attempt to live by them. And some of them pontificate and bullshit with the same zeal, believability, honesty of the kind of people that used to hustle people out of their covered wagons, dealing in liquids with zero effects they promised, IOW a complete scam.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
I can think of a lot worse things that he is than a demon. And all of them require the use of actual swear words, because this asshole defines every swear word and every bit of crap human that can be described. I’ll type them out if you think it’s actually necessary…..
Ruckus
Also, Anne, he deserves an actual go to jesus moment, as in a free actual ride to meet the holder of the name he so tarnishes up with his bullshit. Or at least a ride to the heated basement meeting room.
oatler
I don’t know if it’s just regular Confederate warmongering, but there’s a lot of loud, malevolent money blowing through the state right now.
Origuy
More attacks on power stations, this time in Tacoma.
Balconesfault
My fellow Texans already knew this is who Abbott is, and overwhelmingly reelected him
Joe Falco
Unfortunately, too many Texans vote for their government leaders to be who they are: morally bankrupt without any redeeming qualities.
scav
And, when Texans go ass, they go big. Nothings bigger then Tex-ass.
ColoradoGuy
The whole party is competing for the title “Reincarnation of Josef Goebbels”, with Abbott and DeSantis in the lead.
Although I am nominally Buddhist, I believe demons are real … and these two are the real article. They aren’t merely amoral, but publicly celebrating cruelty, hatred, and endangerment, and by example, encouraging their followers to behave the same.
VeniceRiley
Depraved indifference to human life. Then they’ll go to their fashion parade churches and sing GLORY hallelujah to the highest.
It’s sickening.
Baud
I’m pretty sure Jesus is ghosting Abbot.
CaseyL
On Twitter, RWers are calling this abandonment to the elements a great Christmas present.
Considering the actual history of Christianity, as practiced by way too many people, what Abbott has done is consistent. Maybe even merciful, since he didn’t simply have them all murdered.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
@Arclite:
I don’t think they read the book. not enough explosions and car chases.
lowtechcyclist
@Arclite:
Jesus, quoting Isaiah
Seems rather applicable.
Geminid
There were two more electrical grid attacks yesterday, this time in the northwest. Tacoma Power announced that two of its substations in Pierce County, Washington were damaged by unknown actors on Chrismas day. 7000+ customers lost power.
This would raise the number of recent attacks in Oregon and Washington to 8. On the East Coast there have been 3 attacks in the Carolinas besides the attacks three weeks ago in Moore County, North Carolina where two substations were shot up 20 minutes apart, leaving 48,000 people without power for several days. Authorities have not yet arrested anyone for those or the other attacks.
prostratedragon
Introduccion al Angel
Circular reasoning
I wish I believed in hell so I could enjoy imagining people like Abbott there.
Procopius
I find it hard to believe some statutes aren’t being violated. Start with the bus drivers. Arrest them, charge them, and get them to name their bosses. Arrest them charge them, repeat until you get some high level Republicans. If it’s done right you should be able to track all the way to Abbot himself. I know Merrick Garland doesn’t like to arrest politicians, but there must be some way to hold him to enforce the law.
lowtechcyclist
I’m thinking it’s just as well that we weren’t able to make the trip to Florida for Christmas. Some of my evangelical in-laws would have surely been chortling over this at Christmas dinner, and I would have said some things about their bullshit ‘faith’ that might’ve left a permanent rift in the family.
lowtechcyclist
And it’s a minor detail, but what a crappy place to drop people off at! That’s a very residential part of DC. No room at the inn? There’s no inn, there’s not even a convenience store along that stretch of Mass Ave. for anyone to duck into and warm up. And of course no attempt to let our excellent Vice President know these guests were on the way, to give her and her staff a chance to be ready to take care of them when they got off the buses.
As Terry Pratchett said, sin is treating people as things. And that’s exactly what Abbott was doing, and of course all the white evangelicals are (metaphorically, too bad it wasn’t literally) along for the ride on this. What horrible people they are. They think they’re owning the libs, but they’re just owning themselves as people who don’t give a damn about other people.
Frankensteinbeck
Charity used to be called the Christian thing to do.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: That it’s a residential area is the joke (and, yes, for them it is a joke). Republicans do not believe in collective action, and they subscribe to “as above, so below”. Everything is like a household. If you’re willing to let people into the country, but you are not willing to let them all stay with you in your actual home, then they’ve proven that you’re a hypocrite and you are as bad as them, and they win. If Kamala Harris and the people of that neighborhood did not let the migrants live in their own homes, the point is made.
This is Republican moral and religious logic. What happens to the people as a consequence doesn’t matter at all.
SFAW
I’m not sure I will ever understand why Rethugs go out of their way(s) to be evil assholes. I know a large part of this stunt was Cleek’s Law, but their willingness — well, desire, I guess — to go out of their way to hurt/kill the weaker or less fortunate is just evil.
For a bunch of people who LOVE the “Left Behind” books, they do not understand that THEY would be the ones consigned to Hell, were Jesus to come back.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: I spent a lot of time around such people in my youth.
I guarantee you they’d say “We’re not being evil assholes, YOU are. We just helpfully sent these people to your doorstep because we heard you’re so fucking saintly and generous. You’re welcome.” Given with a little sneer.
But they’d sincerely believe every word of it. They can make themselves believe anything.
Ol_Froth
I wonder what Abbott would think if blue states rounded up homeless veterans and dropped them off in front of his home?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Hey speaking of people claiming to be Christians acting like jerks, and how things never change in US history, here is a video on King Philips War, which was between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans in the 17th C
Americas First Conspiracy
In short – the second generation Pilgrims were appalled at all these people coming to the colony now, so changed the laws to make new immigrants, the poor, native Americans second class citizens. Eventually this blew up 1675 when the Native Americans went to war on the colony. The Colony formed a militia led by rich old white guys who last saw combat thirty years earlier in the English Civil War and conscripted poors. It did not go well.
.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, that all whole everyone deserves hell but they are God’s Chosen elect so it’s their job to show the rest of us how wicked we are nonsense.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: And that it’s all about demonstrating who has more personal virtue, in the first place. (This is a large part of the conservative projection of what motivates liberals.)
stinger
@Matt McIrvin:
Besides being moral monsters, these people aren’t good thinkers. The VPOTUS and SGOTUS have their official residence at the Naval Observatory, but they don’t own it. The American people do. So Repubs clearly want these immigrants living in a really nice place at taxpayer expense. With Secret Service protection, no less.
Matt McIrvin
Incidents like these always remind me of Brad DeLong’s recounting of a conversation he had in 1993, with “Another Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary”:
https://www.bradford-delong.com/2013/10/maeve-reston-reports-from-hugo-oklahom-obamacare-meets-extra-resistance-the-view-from-the-roasterie-xii-october-16-2013.html
This is the conservative-religious conception of charity. It’s not an end in itself, it’s a means to religious ends; actually feeding the poor or clothing the naked is secondary at best. And the “Republicans in Texas” attitude has spread everywhere.
Matt McIrvin
@stinger:
They don’t WANT it to happen; they want it to not happen so they can crow about it. If it happened, that would defeat the whole point.
Mike in Pasadena
We have these floods of migrants at the southern border because when there’s a Democrat in the White House, Rethuglicans start shouting that the US has an open border which metasizes on social media seen in Latin America. Presto, there are people at the border crossing the “open” borders. How did that happen????
James E Powell
@Mike in Pasadena:
Do we really have floods of migrants? I can never be sure because the only ones claiming there are floods are the people who lie about everything else.
Mike in Pasadena
@James E Powell: Good point. I think there really is an increase in migrants at the border after they hear Rethuglicans talking but whether it is a flood is debatable.
Citizen Alan
@Ruckus: There are people who call themselves christians because they have accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts and allow him to make a change in their lives so that they will strive to become better people. And then there are people who call themselves christians because when they were little kids they got dumked in a bathtub after being pressured into it by their families . And having been dumked in the magic bathtub, they were then told that they were better than other people and that they could be as cruel and hateful as they wanted and still get into paradise someday.
Those 2 types of christians have always been with us. But ii took the election of Donald Trump with the support of 81% of evangelical christians to prove with mathematical certainty how thoroughly the 2nd type outnumbers the 1st .
Chris Johnson
The fuck is wrong with these people
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
How’s that a win, though? ‘Proving’ the nonbelievers are just as horrible as the alleged Christians does…what? I’d still regard that as a self-own.
I mean, fifty years ago when I was in more of a fellowshippy environment, faith-wise, we sang songs like “they’ll know we are Christians by our love” which I find myself singing sarcastically a lot these days. “They’ll know we are Christians because nonbelievers are assholes just like we are” seems quite the anti-witness.
And ‘witness’ in the Christian sense is increasingly in need of an antonym.
scav
@lowtechcyclist: You’ve forgotten the bit where all their “sins” are immediately forgiven (they’re on first-name basis with the bouncer Jesus!), whereas everybody else’s sins are unpardonable. See also the long-standing habit of adulterer GOP politicians dragging their wives on stage and announcing their state of personal grace and privacy while not baying about the unfitness for any office of the likes of Bill Clinton.
Ruckus
@Circular reasoning:
Hell exists. Hell is anywhere Abbott is.
Matt McIrvin
@scav: Right. The evangelicals are very big on insisting that doing good doesn’t matter at all; we are all sinners worthy of eternal torture and the important thing is accepting the undeserved grace of God, like your dad who has an in with the cops fixing your parking ticket. And that this is all perfectly OK.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
They don’t go out of their way to be assholes. Or evil.
It’s who they are. They think their shit doesn’t stink.
They aren’t wrong. It doesn’t stink. It reeks.
Ruckus
@Citizen Alan:
I was in that second group. Sunday school or church every Sunday because mom made us. I thought then, and that thought only escalated as time and my young life went on, that it was pure bullshit, a way to make people the same and willing to do as they were told. And for the most part it’s worked, some places better than others, that people in power have control and everyone else has to follow. It was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now. We live in a country where everyone is supposed to be equal, by being born, but for so many the word equality has absolutely zero meaning, doesn’t exist in any way, shape or form. And I have to agree with them, they aren’t equal to everyone else. They don’t come close because they always find some yardstick to measure their bullshit by, that they want everyone but them to agree to. At least their yardstick is as much bullshit as they are.
Ruckus
@Chris Johnson:
Every fucking thing.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Do even they regard that argument as extending to anything besides what they regard as the ultimate question of salvation and damnation?
I mean, if you’ve accepted Christ, it’s cool to be an abortion doctor because God forgives all your sins and you’re going to heaven?
I don’t know if they really believe this nonsense or whether they know they’re just fooling themselves and are OK with that as long as nobody they’re talking with has the ability to cut through the bullshit. But it damn sure isn’t fooling anyone else. Their evangelicalism is anti-evangelism.
Matt McIrvin
(Mind you, Greg Abbott himself is actually a Catholic! But the mindset eventually gets into all the right-wing whites, especially in the South.)
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Also, white evangelicals and conservative Catholics in the U.S. have pretty much done a mind-meld these days. They share the same enemies, so they’ve buried the hatchet on all the more theological issues that used to divide them.
sab
@lowtechcyclist: I am so very old that I remember when Evangelicals and Catholics hated each other. Now they have all bailed out for Authoritarianism. Moraly and religiously abject, but ever so much easier.
lowtechcyclist
@sab: Sounds like you’re in my general age range! I had a brief fundie period 50 years ago, and I remember my fundie friends were positive that Catholics couldn’t be ‘saved.’
“Republican Jesus” is trending on Twitter. Can’t imagine why. ;-)
Paul in KY
He (Abbott) may be even more dicky than DeSatanis.