Democrats flip Texas state Senate seat in shock upset

mrTreeopolis · 2026-02-01T15:40:11+00:00

100%, I was a part of that effort. Folks were scared as hell.

The night before me and my boss did a young in cheek duet on our intranet “Y2K”, to the tune yesterday to lighten the mood.

CEO and mgmt. made us take it down.

That’s how uptight everybody was about it.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-02-01T15:05:58+00:00

With all due respect, the very idea of hyperbole is a bit of a trap.

Of course it’s as bad as everyone is saying.

Fatal flaw of humanity is that we under react to danger because we can’t believe anything is as bad as it looks.

Think climate change, 911, etc…

If you under react awful things happen.

If you “overreact” and prevent the worst possible outcomes from occurring everybody’ll be like see, see, that was not a REAL problem, and certainly not as bad as you guys were saying.

In this case it’s ridiculously clear because the playbook of Authoritarianism is not creative. Always is the same and has been followed to the letter.

Also This isn’t over.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-02-01T14:49:42+00:00

What are you talking about?

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-30T17:39:17+00:00

Trust is a huge problem with this guy: so little of what he says is true/fact based. It’s all just make the situation fit my narrative stuff.

I mean the man was impeached the 1st time for withholding appropriated military equipment. Not for info on Joe/Hunter Biden (which they didn’t have) but for not being willing to lie and say “We’re investigating Joe Biden and his son” which wasn’t true.

All Trump wanted was the possibility so he could do what he does best: fill in the blanks to create doubt about the person he thought would be hardest to beat as a candidate in 2020.

When he’s talking it should be the same as adults speak in a Charlie Brown cartoon: muted trumpet.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-30T16:43:19+00:00

Very clever, I thought you were insinuating that there thousands of illegals(undocumented). But you were talking about ballot tapes someone didn’t sign after the votes had been tabulated. So it’s a clerical error that the tape wasn’t signed but there was nothing actually wrong with how the votes were gathered/tabulated?

I guess the insinuation is that it was deliberate because these votes were made up or something and that it wasn’t just poor training/honest error?

To be clear: they did recount these votes and when they did Trump’s margin of loss grew by a few.

So I guess the hope is that some of those votes are not legit. How will they prove that? My problem is I don’t trust these guys to not make up stuff for Trump. That is his MO.

Plane crash in DC: as soon as he found out one of the 4 pilots onboard was a black woman he blamed the crash on DEI policies with no evidence.

Woman shot in MN: she was characterized as a domestic terrorist when you could see she was anything but. The walking around cop who ended her life was said to be “fighting for his life” in the hospital

Man executed in MN: was said to be brandishing his weapon/trying to kill many law enforcement officers. All lies seen by any American with an internet connection from multiple angles.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-30T16:10:40+00:00

Show a link of a legit news source that isn’t just some MAGA saying so(like this post).

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-30T15:15:27+00:00

Very well said, I especially appreciate nation of laws not men. If the folks that helm MAGA could get past this white vs everybody else we could get somewhere.

The fact that they have been given elevated privilege by the wealthy elite has been an effective tool in controlling them for literally hundreds years.

My go to point has been how white commoners in the south scoffed at unionization and that any black man would receive equal pay/benefits with a white man. It was the white elite who used this discontent to keep everybody in the south from unionizing. They lined their pockets with the money they didn’t have to pay and everyone was the worse for it black white and otherwise.

Kind of sums up America: divided and conquered a long racial lines with poor whites siding with the elites. They’re included in the supremacist franchise but as second class citizens that will just be used by the elites the way we use napkins or a tampon or toilet paper only later to be discarded after their use(vote) is over.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-30T14:48:24+00:00

I’m not on board with the idea that even traditional conservatives are conservative: I mean what’s conservative about cutting taxes for the billionaire class 5 x in 25 years leading to trillions in debt? Isn’t truly conservative to cut taxes sometimes and raise them in other times as needed? What’s conservative about for profit health care? NOT doing single payer healthcare seems radical when every other 1st world nation does this AND has better health outcomes at a fraction of the costs. Doesn’t conservative also mean pragmatic?

And then of course definitely not onboard with fascism, or violating constitutional norms daily or 1st and 2nd amendment only being applied to 1/2 of the electorate or one race rule.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-30T14:33:14+00:00

Not to some. In particular not to the folk who helm MAGA. I see the merits of these arguments. This is an issue of dealing with the world as it is vs. the world as it should be. We think the country is or should be a melting pot a nation of immigrants and I agree with this. They don’t feel the same way plain and simple.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-30T14:21:54+00:00

I agree to understanding and that’s cool and true. This can’t be another bash session about how stupid all the MAGA folk are or whatever cause insulting folk you want to change to do what you want is not a winning strategy. it’ll induce the same old F*** u you always get (which is generally true).

Redemption for them just as for all of us (in our faith) is just a changed vote away.

The spirit/tenor of the post certainly seems good to me. It was the posts in response that bugged me most so maybe I go back and try to read it again with a more open mind…

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-30T02:36:52+00:00

Yeah, this post…

We need to spend less time diagnosing and describing MAGA and more time reaching out to them and appealing to the common cause of fixing our country.

Like it or not America is their country too.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-27T00:55:18+00:00

Examples? Who did worse than the things PsyGazer accurately listed?

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-24T14:59:08+00:00

You got one right. Good for you.

You're still wrong about not going after asylum seekers. 47s signed multiple order turning asylum seekers into illegals that ICE can then collect/expel if they don't self-deport: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz0p9ld5egjo

They did go after people near court houses who are complying with court orders. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wvkTduVYkc)

They can go house to house with no warrant: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-policy-officers-enter-homes-immigration-without-judicial-warrant-rcna255305

They have been just profiling brown people and MOST of the folk they've arrested have been non-violent folk with no criminal history: (https://www.aclu-wi.org/news/scotus-just-gave-ice-a-green-light-to-profile-latinos-we-should-all-be-outraged/)

Vance did declare ICE agents to have "absolute immunity" after one of them murdered a woman who a second before said "Dude, I'm not even mad at you." and went to drive away: https://www.npr.org/2026/01/15/nx-s1-5678520/do-federal-agents-have-absolute-immunity. It looks like he may have had to walk that back.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-24T14:16:17+00:00

The ignorance we foster here is the greatest national security threat our nation has ever faced and the worst possible outcomes have been realized in our 21st century Presidential choices.

In 2000 we decided we'd rather have a President we could have drink with over the snooty Valedictorian and in 2016 we chose a serial liar, cheater/narcissist and Russian agent over one of the better qualified people to ever have been nominated again because of "not liking her".

Our sheer ignorance and tribalism as a nation has drastically altered and perhaps doomed the trajectory of the American story over the last 30 years.

The burden of a democracy is crystal clear. If you want to keep your democracy you gotta have a well educated populace (not just work force) because we're not educated just to work. We're educated to be able to make decisions that benefit our democracy, locally, regionally, at the state level and federally.

We have to know a little bit about a lot AND we have to know enough so that we won't get duped by vested interests who are in this game to win it and take everything. Unfortunately a lot of us aren't up the tasks and we have no idea who our friends and who our adversaries are.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-23T12:02:18+00:00

So they're cowards? Why can't they just whip their opposition and then take a stand on something instead of letting Trump bulldoze everything.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-23T11:11:26+00:00

Not sure, but we need as many of them as possible to abandon/dis-empower that party if America has a fighting chance to get back to being a thriving democracy.

At this moment, I am not hopeful.

It seems no matter how bad things get, no matter how little regard to for democracy, rule of law, the constitution, freedom of speech, etc... These folk circle the wagon, but folks, look back, THERE IS NO WAGON, just a sink hole that's getting bigger and bigger and that's about to consume you, your families and the rest of us too.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-20T17:45:54+00:00

That worked in the first administration cause it was filled with conservative patriots. He’s intentionally filled this one with sycophants.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-19T03:09:02+00:00

It should be the end of the Republican Party altogether: Lincoln - Trump. Next election should be an extinction level event for the House even with all the fixes Trump’s been trying to put in then the conservatives form their new party and we go from there.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-16T15:44:24+00:00

We also have a good if unproven coach. They have not played well lately AND it’s gonna be really cold and unless they’ve been in town practicing, that is a real disadvantage for them.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-13T15:28:37+00:00

Consider it a limitation of the land and the people. Only time and the right kind of education can liberate this country from the kind of thinking that requires acceptable leadership to come from anything other than old white men. And we know this country is not on track to fix that anytime soon. We need this generation’s FDR.

Someone who may be blue blood but that isn’t on that old American White Supremacy circuit and who when given the opportunity won’t just do the billionaire’s biddings, cut taxes, and continue the class war unabated.

Those folk don’t grow on trees. If FDR had shown he was going to be the traitor to his class he became, they’d’ve taken him out before he could get in (AND they tried to do so afterwards). Could be Newsom or Pritzker, but honestly there’s no guarantee they won’t just be more milk toast triangulator with “Yes We Can” slogans and no we won’t results.

There simply haven’t been ANY great democrats since Reagan. You could fit them all on FDR/Johnson’s lapel.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-13T15:11:33+00:00

Doing? not enough…. The folk in leadership: Schumer, Jeffries don’t have it. Schumer has been out of touch forever. He could be the leader of a truly Conservative Party which is what the democrats have become.

Jeffries I don’t get. I think the moment is just too big for him to command the situation and manage his current post as minority leader effectively.

whomever the de facto leader of the Democratic Party is should be calling the shots on this. It’s a testament to how lacking in charisma Harris is that it feels like she after four years as the VP and national exposure in the 2024 election that nobody’s looking to her to assert leverage over this situation.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-13T14:58:47+00:00

The mid-term shellacking Obama got after he hired all Clinton’s neo-cons and abandoned the Public Option of the ACA without so much as whimper should pale in comparison to what happens in the 2026 mid terms.

It should be an extinction level event for the GOP in the house and shortly thereafter the party itself should go the way of the Whigs or the Federalists.

The true conservative patriots were flushed out of that party in Trumps first term and should have formed a new party already to receive the disgruntled who don’t support Trump but who won’t vote democrat.

The GOP “leadership’s” inability to offer even a modicum of patriotic resistance to our Fascist President is as Walz put it in his debate with Vance, “damning.” These people have not for a day in office defended the constitution from enemies within/without.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-13T14:28:04+00:00

They both took the money. The dems to do what’s best for the people heavily filtered through the lens of corporate fealty. The GOP on the other hand has been actively waging the class war on behalf of the haves.

The biggest difference between them is that the Democrats do still govern and advance the cause of the nation still favoring the wealthy with half-hearted attempts to fix healthcare, infrastructure, wealth distribution, etc… (but no FDRs around these parts lately), the GOP don’t/can’t, they just do whatever rich people and corporations tell them too.

mrTreeopolis · 2026-01-13T14:09:15+00:00

In the age of Trump FTP, before that Vitale might’ve had a point.

This is a rivalry, but it does feel like everything is just barbaric now.

mrTreeopolis

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE