Texas Progressives tell Texas wingnuts: Climate change is still very real

Texas Progressives remind the climate change skeptics and denialists inside the Pointy Abandoned Object State™ that just because Texas has been missing its usual midsummer heat wave this year, that doesn't refute that July globally is on pace for a new all-time record. If there were a hell, you folks could bake there instead.

And with that, here's this week's roundup.

Global

SocraticGadfly invites you to be Simon and Garfunkel and picture the sounds of silence that a truly Green, Green New Deal on climate change would bring.

Dallas

Just who is Robert Jeffress, anyway, besides the Trump-fellating pastor of First Baptist Church Dallas? Despite my joke about Trump having nudies of him, a longform piece at Texas Monthly says that while he IS a "roast in hell you sinners" fundamentalist nutty enough to claim the Bible doesn't fully have anything to say about particular economic systems (truth is, Bob, it has NOTHING to say there), and he won't apologize for supporting Trump, he's not a wingnut in every way. Interestingly, he doesn't like the GOP on gunz, AND without saying "single payer," he thinks we need something better than Obamacare.

Well, Rev. Bob, meet Rev. Deanna Hollis, just named by the Presbyterian Church USA as its first national minister of gun violence prevention. All you have to do is drive up the road to Richardson and be as non-partisanly ecumenical as you claim.

Jim Schutze explains why the Red Bird Mall area won't be redeveloped anytime soon.


Houston

David Bruce Collins is upset enough to have not one but two posts about North Houston highway development bloated widening ideas.

Speaking from Houston, but really speaking to all Texas cities eyeing endless rounds of lane widening, Chris Tomlinson says this on Twitter:

Cities will always need cars for the disabled and other special purposes. But the idea that driving alone to work on a public-funded road is a birthright has got to end. Scooters will solve more problems than they cause.

— ChrisTomlinson (@cltomlinson) July 29, 2019

Well put.

Mean Green Cougar Red mourns the demolition of the First Pasadena Bank.

John Coby says good-bye to his Congressman, Pete Olson.


Texas Lege and Texas Politics

Intra-GOP scuffles have Republican activists like "Mucus" Sullivan claiming Speaker Dennis Bonnen has it out for them. He's now firing back.

Telling Greg Abbott to shut up about his call for tough enforcement of state pot laws, a group of central Texas Dems says the laws themselves remain the problem — laws they tried to change.

Stephen Young notices how one-note the Republican response to Democratic Senate candidates is.

Off the Kuff looks at the July campaign finance reports from Congressional candidates.

The Texas Observer reminds us that a lot of people die on the job in Texas.

A three-judge federal panel, sounding like the state supreme court on school finance four years ago, wagged their collective finger at the state but they refused to put it back under Voting Rights Act preclearance.

The rural hospital closure crisis continues.

National

Donald Trump named 1st District wingnut and hack Congresscritter John Ratcliffe — who I personally know is a wingnut and a hack — as his director of national intelligence nominee.

Bob the Knob O'Rourke asks an Obama veteran to bail out his failing and flailing prez campaign.

Brains previewed this week's Dem debate round in his Weekly 2020.

Louie Gohmert once again was Gohmert Pyle.

Better Texas Blog decries the proposals to gut SNAP.

Paradise in Hell interprets Donald Trump's interpretation of the Constitution.