The GENIUS Party Continues Doing Genius Stuff

"Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."
Matthew 7:5

Wait...what?!?



The comment thread linked above contains the full blow-by-blow.  You can also watch the video archive here.  BTL,DR version is that the Texas GOP just denied "affiliate" status to the Log Cabin R's.

On one hand, we don't particularly care.  This is the insidest of inside baseball.  It means nothing in the real world.

But come on:

Republicans’ legislative efforts to ban cities from mandating benefits for employers’ workers took another twist late Wednesday night after a Texas House committee added protections for LGBTQ workers that the state Senate had removed from previous legislation.

Senate Bill 2486, which the House State Affairs Committee advanced Wednesday in a 10-2 vote, is part of a larger package of legislation state Sen. Brandon Creighton filed to limit the ability of cities to regulate private companies’ employment policies.

After hearing roughly eight hours of testimony Wednesday, state Rep. Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, advanced a reworked version of the bill — adding the language explicitly protecting local nondiscrimination ordinances to the measure, which would bar cities from enacting rules on how businesses schedule their employees’ shifts.

The move comes after several legal experts and LGBTQ advocates raised alarm bells that without the language in place, the potential new state law could undermine the enforceability of local anti-discrimination ordinances. They fear it would allow businesses to selectively pick and choose which of its employees are eligible to receive benefits that go beyond monetary compensation.

Phelan later told The Texas Tribune he chose to reintroduce the nondiscrimination protection language into the bill to help ensure local ordinances — already in place in six major Texas cities — aren’t gutted should the measure become law. And he told Tribune CEO Evan Smith in a podcast interview that he’s “done talking about bashing on the gay community” and didn't want to push legislation that could be used as a vehicle for discrimination.

“It's completely unacceptable... This is 2019,” he said.

Followed by:

For conservative Texas lawmakers and their allies in the business community, the fight over paid sick leave seemed like a slam dunk at the start of this year.

Left-leaning cities Austin and San Antonio were in Republicans’ crosshairs after adopting ordinances that required private businesses to offer their employees a certain number of paid sick days. While the city council members spearheading those proposals touted them as beneficial to workers, lawmakers on the other side of the ideological spectrum took issue with cities taking a new role in private companies’ employment policies — and creating patchwork regulations that only applied in certain parts of the state and might differ within a matter of miles.

Legislation blocking those ordinances was hailed as a priority in the Texas Senate, blessed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and lobbied for by wealthy business groups.

But as the session winds down, the bills that would achieve those goals missed the deadline to be considered on the House floor — meaning they’re effectively dead.

Barely six months ago, on the most important employment law bill of the past generation, the Texas GOP cowered and caved to a bunch of bullshit-ass, disingenuous, "objections" from the LGBT crowd.

Yet today we're supposed to believe they're taking some sort of principled stand?!?

Please.

Bottom Line: Hypocrite!  First Pass the sick leave preemption bill.  Then you will see clearly to make "party affiliate" decisions.