I'm just curious as to what happened to about half of this thread—goodness, that's a bunch of missing posts!

No, we did not "all" vote for this. I loathe Rick Perry so much that I habitually vote in the Republican gubernatorial primaries just so I can vote against him twice. Part of our problem is that a lot of Democrats, socialists and other progressives have left the state, and the national Democratic Party wrote Texas off…

Yeah Montrose represent!

Question: Sasaki-san, How many Legos were used in the construction of this dress?

There are districts in Austin that stretch all the way to the Rio Grande Valley. They basically tried to slice Austin up like a pizza, trying to combine the blue core with enough of the red outlying area to try and outnumber the Democrats. And they had to go all the way to fucking Mexico—and a Democrat STILL won…

The whole reason that this special session was called was so Republicans can fuck around with the maps yet again and make it impossible for Democrats to get elected to the bodies that are voting on this law.

Actually, Perry squeaked into office with just over 50% of the vote. And our state legislature has gerrymandered the living shit out our voting maps to try and falsely create districts with a Republican majority where there is none. Within 5 years, there should easily be a Democratic majority in Texas. And even…

Why exactly is this not about me? I've lived in plenty of states (including Texas) who continue to elect morons despite the huge population of liberals.

While you keep on defending an 80% voter majority that didn't happen?

Making up a statistic to try to drive pigeon-holing home is some pretty terrible thinking, bud; I think we covered this reasonably well in the Paula Deen, "stereotyping is bad, so let's stereotype a whole region to prove that stereotyping is bad,"…

I'm not from Texas, but as a Chicagoan I say God forbid everyone who lives in a state with horrible, horrible government be told "you made your bed, now lie in it."

You clown, that's a Texas-based advocacy group trying to get attention to their cause by cherry-picking the particular things that Texas is bad at. To get an actual comparison across states, you have to look at a report that ... wait for it ... compares states. Like, for instance, the ones I provided, that show…

Please stop feeding the troll?

Have you ever heard of a thing called gerrymandering?

Fuck you, asshole. Every state is not a homogeneous group of people who all think the same and act the same.

Bless. <3 from Dallas.

You're an idiot, and your "facts" are some made-up bullshit. This bill was protested by thousands of Texans and is supported by fewer than a quarter of them. Texas does not rank 50th in healthcare, nor 49th in education. If you're going to go around calling people uneducated, you might want to brush up on your…

Logical, but not necessarily true... just last week in New York, our state legislature failed to pass abortion legislation that was part of a bill supported by 80% of New Yorkers. State legislatures are all kinds of fucked up at the moment :/

Yes. I'm Texan, and in the 80%. Can we blame Perry? He's fun to blame!

That was kind of my initial reaction too. I was there last year for the first time. Spent a couple of days. Seemed pretty authentic and genuinely quirky. No more.

I love this comment. Thanks to you, from a Texas woman.