A little postpourri before leaving for Galveston

-- Yes, I know the photos below are slow to load and cause the site to scroll slowly. Update (12/3): the photos have been moved back to their source in order to make this blog more user-friendly.

It's a minor irritant even for those who have high-speed connections. You poor dial-up Neanderthals must be experiencing hell. It looks and works much better in IE7, which is rapidly becoming my favorite browser over Firefox, so try that and see how you like it.

Of course if you are still dialing up, it will take all day and night to download the new browser, so I'll see you back here tomorrow. (My specific advice is to kick the goddamned AOL to the curb and get in the fast lane. It's cheaper and way better. Really.)

-- Capitol Annex wants your input on the Best and Worst of the 2006 political season, so go over there and fill out his survey. I'll have a separate post with my answers to Vince's questions later.

-- This is an absolutely hilarious response by a FReeper in Katy to a planned mosque in his neighborhood.

-- the Young Conservative Goonbats at UT plan a severely retarded nativity scene.

-- this link at Washington Monthly, and others from there, describes the "Texification" of the national GOP and how it led to their recent thumping. It's just too bad the voters in this state are so slow to wake up to the mistakes they have sent to Austin and Washington.

-- Mitt Romney, the Republican evangelicals' Last Hope for 2008, is also a bald-ass hypocrite when it comes to immigration. It probably won't hurt him with this base.

-- and congratulations to Rep. Silvestre Reyes of El Paso, who yesterday was tapped by Speaker-to-be Pelosi to chair the House Intelligence Committee.

Dickens on the Strand this weekend

My favorite festival of the year. Edit (12/3): The photos previously appearing in this space can now be found here.

More photos here. Taking the little nephews for their first trip. Weather should be perfect; see you there.

He's Still the One

The WaPo, Firedoglake, and Stephen Colbert have extensively covered John Hall, the first professional rock musician -- "rock" being a loose description, IMHO -- elected to Congress, so go click and read.

He was/is the lead singer for Orleans, which had two megahits in the Seventies, "Still the One" and "Dance With Me". My personal connection is that this music was released in 1976, my senior year in high school. It got plenty of play at our prom, and contained some good makeout tracks from what I can recall; you can listen to a blast from the past here.

That's the album cover of "Waking and Dreaming" on the right (Hall, with more hair, stands in the middle); it's obvious that the radical homosexual agenda was even then seeping into American culture.


Hall made two appearances on the Colbert Report; the first was in the recurring "Better Know a District" segment in which Colbert sends up an always-hilarious parody of a serious interview. In his bit with the future Congressman, Colbert produced a set of 'smear flash cards'. Hall drew the "My opponent smokes marijuana" one. After he was elected, Hall returned to sing a National Anthem duet with the host (the video snip is linked above).

Congratulations to John Hall, and thank goodness musicians and their fans finally have representation.

This Week in Irony (and it's only Monday)

One of the companies hired to build a wall to deter illegal immigration is being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security for hiring undocumented workers.

Senator Dan Patrick -- the general in his self-proclaimed army of douchebags conservatives -- might just be a bleeding rectum. And the other Republicans in Austin might have to curb their fascism alter their strategy.

The oil companies could be -- surprise! -- squeezing production in order to prop up the price of gasoline.

The Bush twins, Jenna and Not Jenna, went buckwild in South America for their 25th birthday celebration. Apparently they did oversee a little family bidness while they were there: their dad purchased a hundred thousand acre property in Paraguay and Jenna took a meeting with the president of the country and the US ambassador. I hope she didn't have to take her clothes off.

NBC and MSNBC decide to call it a civil war. They are not joined by the rest of the corporate media yet. Kofi Annan says it is almost civil war. The Bush administration calls it a "new phase".

Tired of turkey already

... and of media reports of shopping. Do they simply regurgitate last year's story so that they don't have to go out to the mall and honestly report the percentage of the parking lots' capacity? As if that's news anyway?!

... How about football? Anybody tired of football yet? Shit, I might have to go shopping just to get away from it.

... who's grown weary of certain relatives they only see once a year?

... and why doesn't anyone serve a freaking vegetable at Thanksgiving dinner? Is green bean casserole as close as it gets? Cornbread dressing, oyster dressing, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, baked yams, candied yams, squash casserole, dinner rolls, croissants, cranberry sauce, giblet gravy and the nearest I came to a vegetable was a piece of celery the size of my pinkie fingernail and a chive. One. Chive. No wonder everybody falls asleep after feasting on so many carbs.

Boy, I'm tired. And I think I want some sushi for dinner this evening. Or some Vietnamese soup. Maybe a movie. Anybody seen Bobby yet? The reviews are cruel. Those who've written the ones I've read must be all Republicans ...

Black Friday Postpourri

Scattershooting while wondering what it's like to be fighting for a parking place -- or the last of a certain sale item -- at the mall right about now ...

-- Two separate groups of 20,000 people each in downtown Houston yesterday were fed, and some of those were clothed. Five thousand showed up to help. Elsewhere the need is similarly great.

-- A terribly bloody day in Iraq, but the stores here open early anyway.

-- Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings lost on Jeopardy to David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap (or Lenny from "Lenny and Squiggy" if you prefer). I believe another "fresh perspective" is in order.

-- FOX prepares a conservative version of "The Daily Show". No, really. Their current lineup isn't funny enough (of course).

-- Newt Gingrich intends to use the power of magic -- well, hocus-pocus -- in order to be "elected" President. I'm scared. No really, I am.

After all, it could happen. He could easily carry Georgia and Florida and South Carolina and Texas and several other southern states using this strategy.

-- Jordan Barab at Firedoglake has the comprehensive wrap on the Houston janitors strike.

-- the American Family Association wants you NOT to shop at Wal-Mart this weekend because of their sublime support of the "radical homosexual agenda". No, really.

-- here's some more backstory on last week's James Carville-Howard Dean dustup.

-- The Time is Yao.

Update: I shouldn't mention Black Friday without quoting Steely Dan ...

When Black Friday comes
I'll stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor
When Black Friday comes
I'll collect everything I'm owed
And before my friends find out
I'll be on the road
When Black Friday falls you know it's got to be
Don't let it fall on me

When Black Friday comes
I'll fly down to Muswellbrook
Gonna strike all the big red words
From my little black book
Gonna do just what I please
Gonna wear no socks and shoes
With nothing to do but feed
All the kangaroos
When Black Friday comes I'll be on that hill
You know I will

When Black Friday comes
I'm gonna dig myself a hole
Gonna lay down in it 'til
I satisfy my soul
Gonna let the world pass by me
The Archbishop's gonna sanctify me
And if he don't come across
I'm gonna let it roll
When Black Friday comes
I'm gonna stake my claim
I'll guess I'll change my name

Things to be thankful for

-- My health and the love of my wife, family, and friends.

-- The brave men and women serving our country in the armed forces.

-- that America dumped the 109th Congress.

-- I'm thankful Rick Santorum will have more free time to find the WMD.

-- Really thankful we no longer have to go to war with the Secretary of Defense we had.

-- for "red state values" like protecting reproductive rights, supporting stem cell research, and rejecting discrimination.

-- I'm thankful Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who calls climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” will no longer chair the Senate environmental committee.

-- and that Al Gore helped the nation, and the world, face an inconvenient truth.

-- I'm thankful the Dixie Chicks aren’t ready to make nice.

-- I'm thankful Ted Haggard bought that crystal meth but never used it.

-- I'm thankful for "the Google" and "the email" (and the "series of tubes" that make them possible). I'm particularly thankful Maf54 isn't online right now.

-- that Keith Olbermann's ratings are up and Bill O'Reilly's ratings are down.

-- I am so thankful I won't ever have to spend Thanksgiving hunting with Dick Cheney.

-- and last but nor least, I'm thankful the "Decider" only gets to make the decisions 789 more days.

Have a very happy Thanksgiving

Agonist Radio tonight (and all week)

My blog buddy Sean-Paul Kelley is hosting his progressive radio program each evening this holiday week on KTSA-550 AM. Stream it live over the Web if you cannot listen in the San Antonio market. Here's a podcast from last night's program and his conversation with Nathan Newman about the just-settled Houston janitors strike. Here's tonight's schedule:

700-730: Intro segment, introduce the night's guests, main topic, poll question and call-ins, etc.

730-800: Cliff Schecter is a regular contributor to MSNBC, the Huffington Post, a National Political Correspondent for The Young Turks on Air America and proprietor of Cliffschecter.com online.

800-830: Ted Rall will discuss his new book, Silk Road To Ruin

830-900: Ciro Rodriguez to talk about his quest to knock off Henry Bonilla in the still-to-be-scheduled runoff election in CD-23.

900-930: Charles Kuffner.

930-1000: S-P BS'ing his way through the last 30 minutes of the show.

Call in (toll free) 800-299-KTSA.

They tried to steal it, but we stole it back

Frequent commenter Bev sends this along:

A major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in U.S. House and Senate races across the country is indicated by an analysis of national exit polling data, by the Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization.

These findings have led EDA to issue an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment.

"We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape," said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, "so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for the actual circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig an election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7.

More:

"The numbers tell us there absolutely was hacking going on, just not enough to overcome the size of the actual turnout. The tide turned so much in the last few weeks before the election. It looks for all the world that they'd already figured out the percentage they needed to rig, when the programming of the vote rigging software was distributed weeks before the election, and it wasn't enough," (Sally) Castleman (the national chair of EDA) commented.

Greg Palast previously warned us this might happen (read everything at the link, ahead of the excerpt below, to understand how they almost stole it):

It’s true you can’t win with 51% of the vote any more. So just get over it. The regime’s sneak attack via vote suppression will only net them 4.5 million votes, about 5% of the total. You should be able to beat that blindfolded. If you can’t get 55%, then you’re just a bunch of crybaby pussycats who don’t deserve to win back America.

We took your advice though, Greg, and stole it back. And we're going to work a little harder in 2008 to do the same thing.

Thanks for the heads-up. Botha ya's.

Corporate greedheads give in; janitors strike ends

After the appallingly bad publicity associated with the police crackdown (and additional unconscionable behavior by an assistant Harris County district attorney) on striking janitors over the weekend, the companies involved settled with the SEIU and the five-week-long strike came to an end today.

Bill White made sure he got some of the credit. Not for forcibly clearing the intersections of the city, but for "making many phone calls behind the scenes" to bring the strike to a close.

I call bullshit (until I hear differently from people in the union). White was out to lunch for the last month -- as he has been on nearly every issue requiring even the slightest confrontation during the past year. ( Let's do give him credit for taking on that badass Jordy Tollett, though.) The mayor is doing almost as good a job of wasting his political capital as George W. Bush. Oh, and FWIW, unnamed sources on a "blog" -- especially a corporate media-owned one -- don't impress me much.

And Miya Shay really sucks at blogging, too. Somehow though, she managed to get at least two of the more progressive Texas blogs to pick up on her meme that the strike was pointless. Nice going, fellas. Something about that reminds me of the Texas Democratic Party making sure everyone understands well in advance that they can't win a statewide election.

So if you work in an H-Town office building, thank the person who cleans your bathroom and empties your trash and mops your floor. They won a small victory for their families today against the formidable forces of our local Fortune 100's greed, not to mention surviving the thuggery of Houston's Finest.

Houston's business and governmental leaders distinguished themselves in this matter. Not in a good way.

"Houston can’t go on like this, with so many living in poverty."

We sat down in the intersection and the horses came immediately. It was really violent. They arrested us, and when we got to jail, we were pretty beat up. Not all of us got the medical attention we needed. The worst was a protester named Julia, who is severely diabetic. We kept telling the guards about her condition but they only gave her a piece of candy. During roll call, she started to complain about light-headedness. Finally she just collapsed unconscious on the floor. It was like she just dropped dead. The guard saw it but just kept going through the roll. Susan ran over there and took her pulse while the other inmates were yelling for help, saying we need to call somebody. The medical team strolled over, taking their own sweet time. She was unconscious for like 4 or 5 minutes.

They really tried to break us down. The first night they put the temperature so high that a woman -- one of the other inmates -- had a seizure. The second night they made it freezing and took away many of our blankets. We didn’t have access to the cots so we had to sleep on a concrete floor. When we would finally fall asleep the guards would come and yell ‘Are you Anna Denise Solís? Are you so and so?’ One of the protesters had a fractured wrist from the horses. She had a cast on and when she would fall asleep the guard would kick the cast to wake her up. She was in a lot of pain.

The guards would tell us: ‘This is what you get for protesting.’ One of them said, ‘Who gives a shit about janitors making 5 dollars an hour? Lots of people make that much.’ The other inmates -- there were a lot of prostitutes in there -- said that they had never seen the jail this bad. The guards told them: ‘We’re trying to teach the protesters a lesson.’ Nobody was getting out of jail because the processing was so slow. They would tell the prostitutes that everything is the protesters’ fault. They were trying to turn everybody against each other.

I felt like I was in some Third World jail, not in America. One of the guards called us ‘whores’ and if we talked back, we didn’t get any lunch. We didn’t even have the basic necessities. It felt like a police state, like marshal law, nobody had rights. Some of us had been arrested in other cities, and it was never this bad before.

Rest of the story here.