Jocularity! Jocularity!

This is a photograph of former Ohio State football hero Maurice Clarett's front seat, after he was arrested in a standoff with police in which he was first Tasered, then Maced because the Taser didn't work (he had on a bulletproof vest):


Only one observation:

When you finna throw down on tha playa-hatahs, it's important to be lint-free.

I found this while bumping around in Ted Stevens' tubes. It's a mock-out of both Star Trek and those inspirational posters that have been around for a few decades now:


There are many more here.

Texroots Tuesday

Chris Bell and Maria Luisa Alvarado are traveling together through the Rio Grande Valley the next few days.

Supreme Court Justice nominee Bill Moody started his walk across Texas this week; Land Commissioner candidate VaLinda Hathcox has joined him. (See photos here and here.)

David Van Os continues his Whistlestop Tour to county courthouses in North Texas (Comanche and Archer City and Wichita Falls) and West Texas (Albany and Sweetwater and San Angelo).

And the inaugural trio of Texroots-endorsed Democrats still need a little juice from you. Here's an excellent Q&A on what the Texroots are all about, and here's more on Hank, Shane, and Juan, courtesy of Vince Leibowitz at Capitol Annex:

Juan Garcia. [Website, Bio, Volunteer] Juan Garcia is running against entrenched Craddickat incumbent Gene Seaman (R-Corpus Christi). This is one of a hand-full of races that can be “flipped” from Republican to Democratic control this fall. While Seaman has a massive warchest on hand from previous election cycles, Garcia is actually leading the incumbent in fund-raising right now. To boot, he’s flipped a number of Seaman’s contributors and supporters who are tired of this district being in the hands of someone who is more concerned with staying in Tom Craddick’s good graces than serving the people. And, who could forget Seaman’s vacation to his home-away-from-home in Vail.

Here are some other good Garcia coverage: Why You Should Vote For Juan Garcia (South Texas Chisme), Where In The World Is Gene Seaman (CapitolAnnex), Juan Garcia vs. The Culture of Corruption (Truth Serum Blog), Gene Seaman Is Already Running Scared (The Red State), Juan Garcia Conference Call (CapitolAnnex).

Shane Sklar. [Website, Bio, Volunteer] At 30, Shane Sklar has already headed one of the state’s largest agriculture groups and made a name for himself in the agriculture community. Now, he’s seeking to unseat failed Libertarian Presidential Candidate turned Republican Congressman Ron Paul (R-Surfside) to give the people of Congressional District 14 effective representation. Paul’s main pet projects including voting against nearly every piece of legislation he has the opportunity to vote against—including aide for parts of Texas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and bemoaning the fact that the U.S. is no longer on the “gold standard.” Polling in the district earlier this year shows that voters are dissatisfied with Paul’s “Dr. No” attitude and his failure to support legislation that would benefit the district.

Here are some other links related to Shane Sklar: Guest Post at Off The Kuff, Interview with Shane Sklar (via Kuff, mp3), Sklar blasts Paul for voting against Relief (Baytown Sun), Captain Ron (In The Pink Texas), Interview with Shane Sklar (AustinNews.net), Bad Poll Numbers for Ron Paul (Kuff’s World).

Hank Gilbert. [Website, Bio, Volunteer] Remember Todd Staples (R-Palestine)? The State Senator who was one of the architects of DeLay’s redistricting scheme and is one of the Trans Texas Corridor’s best friends in the Legislature? He’s now running for Agriculture Commissioner, although no one can quite point to any major achievements he made for agricluture while in the Texas Senate. Hank Gilbert is a rancher and former high school ag teacher who actually wants to be agriculture commissioner, instead of simply use the post as a stepping-stone to higher office, like Leininger devotee Susan Combs. Hank’s fierce opposition to the Trans Texas Corridor and his common-sense goals for the Texas Department of Agriculture are far more suited to a state that boasts such an important agribusiness economy than those of his opponent.

Here are some links on Hank (or, in the case of the first link, against his opponent): Don’t Get Stapled, Hank Gilbert Or Corporate Interests–You Choose (Jobsanger), Hank Gilbert For Ag Commissioner (Burnt Orange Report), Hank Gilbert, 40/40 Project (Burnt Orange Report), Hank Gilbert: Candidate for Ag Commissioner has Better Solution (The Open Road [note: this is an anti-toll road blog, not a progressive “D” blog, but I thought it added some variety to this list), Interview with Hank Gilbert (mp3, via Off The Kuff).

So…what are you waiting for? Click here to support these three great candidates! You can split your donation among all three candidates or make separate donations to each campaign.

Update: The Blogging Representative has a report with photos of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor in the Valley. And I wish to express a humble 'thank you' to all who helped push David Van Os over the top in his "$30,000 in thirty days" fundraising appeal. (Note also the graphic in the right sidebar.)

Photos of Cubans

...who are now Cuban-American.



That's Nilda and Israel Behar-Ojalvo (my mother- and father-in-law) leaving the courthouse in Matanzas, Cuba, shortly after they were married in 1957.

This is Mrs. Diddie's brother Johnny (Juan) and aunt Delia, in Cuba, approximately 1954.



Left: a first winter (February, 1962) in the US, with those unsuitable overcoats. Right: with baby sister Nildita in 1964.

Shorter Lieberman

Yes, I know, not quite timely due to my being MIA around here since Monday. My absenteeism notwithstanding ...

"I care too much about democracy to respect the outcome of a fair election, and I have too much regard for the people of Connecticut to actually pay attention to the message they are sending."

Don't you wish that Joe Nomentum would have put up, oh, maybe half as much a fight in Florida in 2000, when he was the Democratic Party's vice-presidential nominee?

"So now I will continue to run against a candidate who has already beaten me, against a party I expect to remain a member of."

Sadly, his cowardice in 2000 wasn't the end of Lieberman's political career but possibly the beginning. Out of disaster rose a (thankfully, doomed-from-the-start) presidential run in 2004. This latest twist to the story -- if handled with a previously-undiscovered grace -- could be the end.

(Unless of course President Rove names him Secretary of Defense on the occasion of Donald Rumsfailed's sudden retirement.)

We now return to your regularly scheduled snark

So what's up with this latest Red Alert?

Thank God the world is finally being made more secure from the likes of Dasani (a terrorist surname if ever there was one) and Paul Mitchell and Bausch and Lomb.

Is anybody testing those confiscated lotions for explosive content, or are they all being thrown away? Can't they be resold by DHS in the airport gift shops to fund the extra personnel needed?

Is any data being collected on those airline passengers who are surrendering their toothpaste and mouthwash? It seems we ought to be able to add to the bad-guy database if we knew precisely which al-Qaeda members were still trying to sneak Pond's onto planes.

This is what our airports are going to look like shortly after the next terrorist attack:

Do you feel safer?

Bicho malo nunca muere

Part Two of mi Cubana's story follows. Part One is here.

=====================

My family left Brooklyn for Hopewell, Virginia in 1963, after my father was hired by the Allied Chemical Co. as a mid-level engineer at a plant in Chesterfield, VA. We lived in a small frame house, but as my father was able to save a little, we moved to a larger home after the birth of my sister, who was named after my mother Nilda (and called Nildita). My brother Johnny had entered college, and my aunt Delia had remained in New York with her new husband Luis Quintero. She held a doctorate in pedagogy from the University of Havana, but she worked as a seamstress and attended night school to get her teaching certification here. My aunt taught in the New York public school system until she retired in 1984. She had met Uncle Luis in Cuba, and they were married in New York in 1963. He was a pharmaceutical sales rep and a Teamster.

Though I was only a first-grader, I can recall the heated discussions my family would have about the developments in Cuba. They were all incensed about President Kennedy's failure to support the soldiers at the Bay of Pigs in '61, and they really never got over it. (Most Cubans of my parents' generation have always voted Republican, and this is the primary reason.)

My dad was promoted to plant management with Allied and we moved to New Jersey in 1970. Sadly, my brother Johnny passed away in 1976, at the age of 28, the day before my sixteenth birthday. I spent my formative years in Freehold Township (Springsteen country!) and my father continued rising through the ranks at Allied-Signal, receiving a promotion to manage a chemical facility in Orange, Texas, where we moved in 1980.

That's where in the winter of 1981, at a fraternity party, I met the man who became my husband. Perry and I married in September of 1986, my father retired from Honeywell in 1988, and my parents moved to Miami to join my aunt and uncle and many of our relatives in Little Havana. They later moved back to Texas, joining my sister and I in Houston after my nephews joined the family in the mid- to late '90s.

My mother, who had long suffered from a defective heart valve, had an operation in 1994 to replace it but suffered several small strokes as a complication of the surgery. She recovered most functionality, but her mental condition has generally declined over the years since to the point where she now has severe dementia and must be cared for around the clock. My father was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2003, and has sent it into remission four times with a battery of chemotherapy treatments administered by the fine doctors at Baylor and Methodist Hospital, in the Texas Medical Center.

My uncle Luis passed away in 1990, and my dear aunt Delia, who was like my second mother, lost her battle with cancer in May of this year.

My parents and I had become United States citizens in 1967. Though their parents had always spoken of someday returning to Cuba, my mother and father had made a new life for themselves and were happy and comfortable here. They never spoke seriously of returning, though they both had many relatives on the island whom they would never see or speak to again. My mother, who is only a few months older than Fidel, often said of him: “Bicho malo nunca muere”, which translates to “A bad bug never dies.” She couldn't have guessed how prophetic that would turn out to be.

I have some interest in visiting Cuba, but as a naturalized Cuban-American it would not be possible until the Communist regime is done away with. I hope one day in the not-too-distant future that my husband and I can visit the land of my birth, perhaps see some of my distant relatives and complete the circle of discovery that my family began so many years ago.

"Texroots" rolls out first endorsements

See, a bunch of us have been talking, and we finally figured out how to leverage the Internets into something meaningful. This is how we do it:

The Texas Progressive Alliance today launched 'TexRoots,' an online fund-raising campaign designed raise funds for Democratic candidates in Texas via the internet. The launch of 'TexRoots' is the first major unified fund-raising effort by Texas blogs of its kind.

The Alliance, a group of blogs and bloggers united to promote Democratic and progressive candidates and causes, launched 'TexRoots' Monday with solicitations for three Texas candidates: Hank Gilbert, candidate for Agriculture Commissioner, Juan Garcia, candidate for Texas House of Representatives in District 32, and Shane Sklar, candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Congressional District 14. The Alliance's goal is to raise a combined $3,000 for the "Texas Trio" of Gilbert, Garcia and Sklar. TexRoots works with the nationally recognized fund-raising tools of ActBlue.com.

So, your mission -- should you choose to accept it -- is to support the effort by contributing what you can to these fine Democrats. Take out your credit card, click on the box at the top right and help us turn Texas a little bluer.

Dejando A Cuba, No Mas Libre

As promised, Part One of the guest post from mi Cubana:

=================

My family in Cuba was easily what would be considered upper middle class. We had a large home in the province of Matanzas, east of Havana, and employed domestics -- cooks, maids, people who did the laundry. My father, Israel, was a pharmacist and then a manager in a chemical plant which produced rayon. My mother Nilda was a teacher before she married my father and became a full-time housewife after the birth of my older brother Johnny in 1947. Johnny was my half-brother; my mother divorced his father and married my dad in 1957. I was born in 1960, twenty months after Fidel Castro overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista.

My family was horrified at the prospect of a communist Cuba. The thought of the schools, hospitals, businesses large and small being taken over by the state, with free speech not only stifled but clamped down, with boys conscripted at age 14, all was a terrifying thing to them. My maternal grandfather, Luis Felipe Lizazo, was a journalist and political activist; he ran for office in the years prior to La Revolucion challenging the party of Batista (as a capitalist, of course). He was also the highest degree Freemason and head of his lodge. After Fidel came to power he was almost immediately imprisoned for counter-revolutionary activity. So was the man who later married my mother's sister in the US -- my uncle Luis -- and my mother's cousin Elsa, who was detained for several days in very unsanitary conditions with a large group of other women.

The Cuban political prisons were as bad as anything you have heard. Once my grandfather got nothing to eat for a month but mashed pumpkin. There were mock executions, where a prisoner would be taken out of his cell and even fired at, but not upon. My grandfather was in and out of Castro's El Principe until he passed away in 1967.

The last straw for my parents came in 1961, when my brother was approaching his fourteenth birthday, and at that time boys of his age were taken from their family to military training camps. A large army was of course needed to continue La Revolucion. My father felt things in Cuba were only getting worse, and my mother was adamant that Castro would not get her son.

My dad concocted an elaborate ruse in order to escape; many professionals at the time were leaving the country while on vacation, and he believed he was under surveillance, so he took his vacation without traveling anywhere. A few weeks later, he reported to his plant supervisor that his father had suffered a heart attack, and he had to take time off to go see him in a neighboring province. They packed less than what you might take on a weekend trip -- a few clothes, some extra cloth diapers for me -- and left their home unlocked and all their money in the bank, and instead went to the airport in Havana.

My family's paperwork -- Papi applied for a passport long before Castro ceased processing them -- had initially been held up because my dad's name matched that of an avowed Communist, and that naturally meant he would be unable to qualify for political asylum in America. That matter had taken weeks to clear up, long before he took his vacation and arranged the "illness". But the most harrowing part of the journey came at the Havana airport: our flight to Jamaica was delayed for unexplained reasons for several hours. My father told me years later that those hours waiting were the most agonizing of his life. Had he been discovered he would have been thrown in jail, probably for the rest of his days. All of the trappings of wealth he had acquired were lost anyway, but the thought of his wife and son and infant daughter serving a Castro regime in destitution while he languished in prison was more than he could bear.

Finally we were all able to depart without incident, and my family, together with my aunt Delia, spent a few weeks in Jamaica getting the assistance of a Jewish organization to come to the United States. We arrived in New York in October of 1961.

My dad took a job in a pharmacy, but because his licensing was delayed, he performed janitorial work until he could be certified. My mother and aunt spent their first winter in the States with unsuitable overcoats, and they told me that as they trudged through the snow carrying groceries home, it was so cold that they cried.

Next: Bicho malo nunca muere

On call with Barbara Radnofsky

The next Senator from the Great State spent some time with a few of us blog-types on the phone last night, talking about her campaign, her opponent, and the brightening Democratic prospects in November.

Radnofsky had spent the day in Southeast Texas -- Jasper, Beaumont, Orange, Port Arthur, and Baytown -- talking to newspaper editorial boards and seeing firsthand the still-unrepaired damage from last summer's Hurricane Rita. In our 45-minute call we discussed immigration, education, healthcare, and veterans' affairs as well as polling and debates.

Some highlights follow, dear reader, but first take a moment and go read a little about Pence-Hutchison, our incumbent Aging Prom Queen's response to the immigration 'problem'.

Shorter version: Kay Bailey is asking all people in the United States without proper documentation to "just please go home".

Seriously. She calls it 'self-deportation'.

Once they do so, they can proceed to Ellis-Island type 'centers' -- buildings to be constructed by Halliburton, I'm guessing -- where they will be medically examined and biometrically tagged.

I'll bet you think I'm making this up, don't you?

Those people who get the US Government's Seal of Approval get a shiny new ID card matching their ear tag and the chance to apply for something called a Good Neighbor SAFE visa, and while they wait, Uncle Sam gets busy tightening up border security Republican-style (which means triple fences, more helicopters, guards, and much larger detention facilities). This process appears to be designed to last two years, and then once the President of the United States has certified our country's borders as "secure", then people get to begin returning – provided, that is, that they can prove they have a job waiting for them.

Oh yes, one more thing, this 'guest worker' program is limited to citizens of Latin American countries which have ratified NAFTA and CAFTA.

After twelve years -- seventeen if they need the extra time -- these folks can apply for citizenship without leaving the US. Yesterday on Lou Dobbs' program they were calling this legislation the "Amnesty for All" bill.

That label alone likely queers the deal with the conservative hard-liners.

Fabulous plan, isn't it? I'll bet the eleven to twelve million undocumented workers here now will be rushing to take advantage of this opportunity.

Hutchison's own opinion of her legislation?

"What Mike and I are trying to do -- we've been meeting for a month -- is put something out there and say, 'Let's start.' We're not saying this is perfection. We're not saying this is the end result."

OK, now that you've managed to stop laughing, let's point out that Barbara Radnofsky thinks this idea is just as bizarre and doomed to failure as you do. This is unfortunately typical of the impact Hutchison has made throughout her tenure; it’s another example why the senior Senator from Texas has been so ineffectual. After thirteen years she still has no idea how to craft or even advance legislation, much less serve the interests of any but a narrow band of her constituents.

Radnofsky used a fishing term to describe Hutchison's incompetence: "she hasn't put out the traps." I don't know if Barbara has ever done any crabbing along the Texas coast, but I have, and I damn sure know what that phrase means: it means someone is too lazy even to catch themselves something to eat. Barbara probably meant that Hutchison hadn't done her due diligence. I took it to mean that Kay Bailey has simply done the same thing she has done all her life -- waited for someone else to catch, clean, cook and serve the food she eats -- and do the dishes afterwards.

And that's really an apt microcosm of Kay Bailey's political career. Cheerleader, homecoming queen, TV weather girl. She's never worked for anything in her entire life; it's all been handed to her. It's also part of why she refuses to agree to a debate with Barbara, describing herself as "too busy" even as she skips votes in the Senate.

Kay Bailey is weaker than rainwater. She’s the human equivalent of pablum. And everyone -- her colleagues, her supporters, and her constituents -- all know it. It’s why when you write or call her office you never get anything but a canned response.

KBH did manage to become a lawyer, though her interpretation of the law occasionally falls short of the law's actual definition, such as when she considered Karl Rove's (alleged) perjury to be a technicality, or when she recently asked Alberto Gonzales to simply overlook the anti-trust provisions being violated in the Wright Amendment.

These are only a few of the reasons why the woman once described as "the most popular politician in Texas" is suddenly slumping in the polls, even as Radnofsky begins to creep up. Texans -- like the rest of America -- have developed an acute case of Bush fatigue, and Kay Bailey has been one of the many enablers of its disastrous agenda.

At the conclusion of our conference call I asked Barbara specifically about the odd phenomenon of Democratic disillusionment, expressed in MSM articles like this one, and she said she'd experienced it in her nearly five hundred trips around the state, and that she, like Chris Bell and David Van Os in previous Texblogosphere calls before her, had also sensed a turning of the tide. The outrage of Republican policies in Washington and Austin has been expressed repeatedly by the Republicans who have shown up at Courthouse Tourstops and Trans-Texas Corridor hearings. The momentum is clearly shifting, the Traditional Media is largely unaware of it, and Democrats up and down the ballot will be the beneficiary.

Next week, as part of the push to November, the Texas Progressive Alliance (of which this blog is a founding member) will announce our first Texroots-endorsed candidates. Many of the Democratic candidates you have already read about here will be featured. A call to arms -- including of the financial kind -- will be part of that appeal.

Texas is going to turn a little more blue, and we're all going to have a hand in it.

Chris Bell on stem cell research

"To me it's not just an issue, it's personal."



Where does Grandmaw stand on this issue? Should we even bother asking Dick Friedman?

Tom gets to run, after all

according to an early flash from the Chronic.

I think this is good news, though replacing him would've suited me fine as well. District 22 is electing Nick Lampson, regardless of opponent.

This race no longer qualifies as all that interesting -- except for hearing that last crunch of The Coackroach being squashed on November 7.

On Castro and regime change

With this news that Fidel has handed off some of the titular responsibilities of running Cuba to brother Raul -- no spring chicken himself -- I have asked a Cuban-born American citizen to guest-post here in the next few days.

She emigrated in 1962 1961, in the arms of her mother and father, and lived in New York and Petersburg VA before moving to Texas in the late '70's, where I met and later married her.

Mrs. Diddie has a few blog-worthy tales to tell about her family's experience as political dissidents, asylum-seekers, immigrants, and then US citizens. Regarding the man ultimately responsible for my being introduced to my wife, I only hope that his now-timely demise doesn't force her to hasten a thoughtful posting. Her mother has end-stage Alzheimer's and her father suffers again from a return of the bladder cancer that he has valiantly beaten back five times over the past ten years, so getting a few of their recollections of La Revolucion published is urgent enough as it is.

Look for this post here hopefully by the end of the week.