Thumbs: Abbott’s speech in a ‘safe space’

President Joe Biden’s interactive, State of the Union improv last week really raised the bar for future contenders for the job. Here was an 80-year-old leader of the free world, often chided for his embarrassing gaffs and over-reliance on teleprompters, suddenly sparring with rough and furry Republican hecklers, ad-libbing a few dad (granddad?) jokes and tricking them to agree publicly to reasonable policy positions. (This week, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, bowing to pressure after Biden’s remarks, backed off his proposal to sunset Medicare and Social Security.) So, the expectations were high for Gov. Greg Abbott, often mentioned as a presidential hopeful, to deliver his State of the State speech this week with the same verve. It soon became clear, though, that Abbott wasn’t interested in spontaneity and charisma. More like a “hermetically sealed safe space,” as Texas Monthly put it: “The press wasn’t allowed to attend. Cell phones were banned. And attendees — including ‘select members of the San Marcos business community’ — were originally expected to sign nondisclosure agreements.” For someone thinking about Iowa and New Hampshire, the speech’s content was shockingly parochial. Our eyes glazed over about 10 minutes in when he proposed establishing new courts to “deal with complex commercial litigation,” and by the time he got to beating one of his favorite dead Trojan horses — Biden’s “open border policies” — we were practically comatose. He’ll never be the zealous culture warrior the hardcore right-wingers want, and yet, his shameless pandering to appease them has hamstrung his ability to get things done that most Texans, and especially the general American electorate, actually care about. His stump speech desperately needs a jolt of energy, and yet, he keeps beating his Texas Democratic opponents by a landslide. If he wants to continue his winning streak nationally, though, maybe he should dip into his colossal campaign war chest soon to pay for a public speaking class.

Whatever you do, governor, don’t give the money to Ken Paxton, no matter how much he begs. And he might well come begging now that fellow Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan has signaled his disapproval at the idea of taxpayers footing the bill for the attorney general’s ethical lapses. This time, it’s the $3.3 million settlement Paxton was ordered to pay four agency whistleblowers who went to the FBI to accuse Paxton of corruption and several potential crimes. “He’s going to have to appear before the appropriations committee and make a case to that committee as to why that is a proper use of taxpayer dollars, and then he’s going to have to sell it to 76 members of the Texas House,” Phelan said. While we admittedly kind of love the notion of Paxton earnestly sitting before a House committee, tin cup in hand begging for money like Oliver Twist with a law degree, we’d love it just as much if Phelan and any other Republicans embarrassed by the attorney general would say so publicly the next time he’s up for re-election.

Remember in the ’90s when the idea of a big space rock hurtling toward Earth pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office? Today, Americans watch our summer blockbusters on the couch with microwave popcorn and Texans found actual comfort this week upon learning that a loud, rattling explosion in the Valley on Wednesday afternoon was nothing but a friendly meteor strike and not something scary like, you know, more alien invaders stalking the North American skies. South Texas officials weren’t sure what to think when residents began reporting a mysterious blast in the sky, but Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra later announced, citing an FBI report, that two pilots flying near Houston had reported seeing an apparent meteorite. “Obviously with all these incidents close, you can imagine what our constituents’ and our citizens’ fears were,” he said, referring to a spate of incidents in which the U.S. military has shot down a Chinese spy balloon and three other notyet-identified flying objects in Alaska, Canada and over Lake Huron. Congress is demanding answers from the Biden administration, which hasn’t said much except that the objects were more likely related to research than spying. Meanwhile, speculation and UFO theories are flying. We believe The Truth Is Out There. But so are lies.

Meanwhile, in League City and Pearland, residents reported their own sightings of green, chattering, winged visitors. No, we’re not talking about mutant creatures crawling out of chemical tanks, just a pandemonium of parakeets. (Yes, that’s what a group of these tropical birds are called, a pandemonium, and we’ve been waiting our whole careers to use it in a sentence.) This isn’t the first time they’ve been found well outside the confines of zoos and pet shops, and far from South American rainforests. Two years ago, Chronicle readers from Deer Park were enthralled by a mysterious structure attached to the legs of a local water tower until a birder identified it as a gigantic condominium built by a parakeet pandemonium. For decades, these feral, so-called non-natives have thrived by building stick nests the size of pickup beds attached to cell phone towers, stadium lights, transmission towers, basically anything metal. What could be more Houstonian than that? We’re all clinging to some corner of this enormous, wondrous concrete and steel machine we call a city.