Texas Democrats Might Actually Flee the State to Block Racist Redistricting

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work gets done and where you can’t even hear the murmur of a prayer.

Usually we leave the events in the great state of Oklahoma to our correspondent, Friedman of the Algarve, and we will get around to it in the usual way too. But this one is juicy enough to lead off the whole damn semi-regular weekly survey. And it involves blog fave-rave Ryan Walters, the state’s education czar. And porn. From the Associated Press:

Education board members Becky Carson and Ryan Deatherage told the online news outlet NonDoc that they saw a video featuring naked women in Walters’s office during the executive session. They said that they were the only people seated in places where they could see the screen.

Carson said that when she asked Walters to turn it off, he expressed confusion before doing so.

That last part is so delicious. The idea of Christian warrior Walters giving his colleagues the old Ralph Kramden hummina-hummina before finding the off button while nekkid women gambol across the screen is a comeuppance even I never would have thought of. Even better, of course, is that this whole episode is roiling Oklahoma politics to the point that all of the Jesuses on all the dashboards of all the pickups are dancing the hootchie-koo.

Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, a Republican, in a news release on Friday said it was “a bizarre and troubling situation,” and that “the accounts made public by board members paint a strange, unsettling scene that demands clarity and transparency.” State Sen. Adam Pugh, a Republican who is the Senate education chairman, said in the news release that the reports from the meeting “raise a number of questions.”

More witnesses have come forward.

Chris Van Dehende, a third board member, did not see what the TV was displaying before Walters turned it off, but claimed it was “clearly” something inappropriate from the reactions in the room. “All I can say is having been in the room, not seeing what was on the TV, but seeing the reactions to Becky Carson primarily, and Ryan Walters’s reaction to what he saw when he spun around and saw the TV,” said Van Dehende. “Something clearly was on that TV that shouldn’t have been on that TV. Why it was on, I don’t know.”

Investigations have begun, much to our delight here in the shebeen. We will keep you updated on this beauty, oh, yes, we will do that.

So, for the moment, we will cross that ol’ Red River and arrive in Texas, where the state legislature has unveiled a new electoral map, one that would have embarrassed Elbridge Gerry. From the Texas Tribune:

The new map targets Democratic U.S. House members in the Austin, Dallas, and Houston metro areas and in South Texas. The draft, unveiled by state Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, will likely change before the final map is approved by both chambers and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott. Democrats have said they might try to thwart the process by fleeing the state. This unusual mid-decade redistricting comes after a pressure campaign waged by President Donald Trump’s political team in the hopes of padding Republicans’ narrow majority in the U.S. House. Currently, Republicans hold 25 of Texas’s 38 House seats. Trump carried 27 of those districts in 2024, including those won by Democratic U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen.

The map was immediately panned as racist and illegal by Democrats, who have been raising the alarm about the prospect of voters of color being diluted. The proposed map splits voters of color in Tarrant County among multiple neighboring Republican districts and changes the shape of the 35th District in Central Texas, which was originally created as a result of a court order to protect the voting rights of people of color.

The Texas Democrats warn us that this chicanery is going to spread all over the country wherever the GOP has majorities in the state legislatures. Perhaps Canada can offer asylum to all quota-defying Democrats seeking to flee their states. Of course, no-longer-indicted Texas attorney general Ken Paxton already has moved to preclude this option. C’mon, Canada. There’s cash money in hosting governments in exile, and it’s a growth industry.

And we conclude, as is our custom, back in the Great State of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Great Pyrenees Friedman of the Algarve brings us a phony land deal in which blasphemy was the hook for a sucker of epic proportions. From KTUL:

Gene Bicknell, the investor behind the proposed American Heartland Theme Park in Vinita, Oklahoma, has filed a lawsuit against the project’s developers. He alleges they coerced him into investing $60 million of his remaining fortune, only for the plans of the multibillion-dollar project, said to rival Disney World, to fall apart. Steven Hedrick, with Mansion Entertainment Group, spoke publicly about the project in April 2024, saying, “If you can give them a place to stay, they’ll stay longer, and they’ll spend more money.” As of now, there is no construction activity on the site and no indication that any progress has been made since the groundbreaking for the Three Ponies RV Park, on October 30, 2023. The websites for both the theme park and the associated RV park are offline.

Okay, so far, a pretty ordinary real estate swindle. The current president wouldn’t even have turned a hair. But the hook in this con was truly, uniquely Red America.

According to the lawsuit, Bicknell claims developers Richard Silanskas, Larry Wilhite, and Hedrick “orchestrated a campaign of deception” to defraud him. The suit alleges Wilhite and Silanskas sent hundreds of emails convincing Bicknell he was receiving directives from God to fund the project and trust them with its management. The lawsuit alleges the developers used Bicknell’s money to pay themselves, with plans to take control of the theme park once it was completed.

As Jesus warns us in Matthew 7:15: “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are complete bullshit artists.”

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.