Hey, Abbott!!!!

Yesterday, the governor of Texas Greg Abbott posted another of his tweet proclamations in his ongoing pandering attempt to pretend he's a Trump-in-training and placate the far-right base as much as possible in order to solidify his support in his hope to be re-elected, which weakened significantly after the energy debacle of the winter -- which is actually posed to reappear as the summer heats up.  He wrote -- 

"I just signed a law that prohibits any government agency or public official from issuing an order that closes places of worship.  The First Amendment right to freedom of religion shall never be infringed."

For starters, "Freedom of religion" has absolutely nothing to do with the closing of a house of worship during a health crisis.  One can still worship their faith if a house of worship was ever temporarily closed to keep people from dying and spreading disease during a world pandemic.  I suspect that Gov. Abbott would be hard-pressed to find a single person, in fact, who stopped worshiping their God of choice because it turned out that their church was temporarily closed during the pandemic.

By the way, the reason it's easy to know this is just your basic Abbott Pandering (tm) is because in its swaggering and sashaying words to "prohibit any government agency or public official from issuing an order that closes places of worship" -- which sounds so cool and noble -- he conveniently leaves out like what happens if a city building inspector comes by a house of worship and discovers that there are major code violations that show faulty electrical wiring that could go up in flames at any moment or a rotting foundation or support walls which could make the building collapse on all those in attendance.  To suggest that this law would prohibit such safety protectives is either utterly idiotic or irresponsibly deadly-dangerous.

I also note that he only singles out keeping "Freedom of religion" from ever being "infringed" in his tweet, and not any of the other freedoms that the First Amendment protects.  Of course, that may be because he's not all that big on protecting Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press as much -- or at all, at least for those he disagrees with.

But above all, I love Abbott's pandering and posturing about how First Amendment Rights "shall never be infringed" (!!) while from the other side of side of face he's trying to pass laws he knows will infringe profoundly on many people's rights to vote. Mostly minorities.

What Greg Abbott doesn't understand while trying to be a Trump-in-training is that being a little fascist leader takes a lot more skill than he has ever shown.  Oh, sure, he has all the fascist instincts.  And has all the fascist words.  But he's so ham-fisted in his clunky efforts that he just comes across as a ponderous fascist thug.