Wednesday, January 31, 2007

"And for me, it's leaving time"


I have a grandly dramatic vision of myself stalking through the canyons of the Big Apple in the rain and cold, dreaming about driving with the soft night air of East Texas rushing on my face while Willie Nelson sings softly on the radio, or about blasting through the Panhandle under a fierce sun and pale blue sky….I’ll remember, I’ll remember…sunsets, rivers, hills, plains, the Gulf, woods, a thousand beers in a thousand joints, and sunshine and laughter. And people. Mostly I’ll remember people.

There is one thing, an important thing, I have to tell you before I go. What I’m going to tell you is more than a fact. It is a Truth. I have spent six years checking it out, and I know it to be true. The people who subscribe to The Texas Observer are good people. In fact, you’re the best people in this state. I don’t care if you think that’s pretentious or sentimental—it’s just true.

If I got to naming you, I would never stop, so I won’t. But please believe me that all of you whom I know and many of you whom I know only by letter are in my mind as I write this—even if I do forget your names half the time. Always excepting, of course, the turkey who sends me hate mail after my annual gun-control editorial. Turkey, turkey, turkey.

I wanted to call this “The Long Goodbye” but Kaye won’t let me. She wanted to call it “Ivins Indulges in Horrible Fit of Sentimentality.”

I love you. Good-bye my friends.

The closing paragraphs of Molly’s goodbye column to Texas Observer readers published June 18, 1976, as she left to join The New York Times.

Barack's poster, Hillary's arms, and Abe's conservative agenda





Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Another drive-by

Too busy still to put my own thoughts up so here's some of the reading I'm liking:

-- Vince (and other of my Texblog brethren and sisteren) say that giving Tom Craddick any more power this session is a bad idea. But a comment to Vince's post suggests it would be the better of two evils. Update (5 p.m.): The resolution is defeated, handing Speaker Craddick a loss.

-- Here's your Libby trial update from Marcy Wheeler and Jeralyn Merritt, courtesy Steve Gilliard and Easter Lemming (the Warren Zevon link is icing).

-- Vista's here. This crap by Bill Gates -- planned obsolescence promoted on the Daily Show -- really makes me want to go buy a Mac. Dwight has, as he always does, the best tips on how to make the switch. I'll wait until the last possible moment, i.e., if one of my computers needs replacing or MS stops updating XP. Hopefully that moment will be a few years from now.

-- Some local news: a good article on the state's programs to support families is here, with a cool quiz. I scored a 70. The Auto Show is in town and it's much greener than in the past; this is still one of the best diversions that comes to Houston. I particularly want to go examine the new crossovers -- I drive an Equinox but am lustily eyeing the new Nissan Rogue. The Chronic also has the news that electricity deregulation has failed Texans. This article is about ten days old but provides an update on Jim Turner, who may yet have some political ambitions. And j-a-x has some of the best skyline photos I have seen.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Cold, wet bloggerhea

-- Shelia Jackson Lee is hosting "Iraq War Summit: What Next?" today in downtown Houston. The conference will be followed by a silent march.

-- the Discovery Channel scoops CNN relative to an old story: that TWA 800 was brought down by a missle and not a spark in the gas tank. I've always thought that the biggest argument against any conspiracy theory is preventing someone from talking to Mike Wallace (or writing an expose') years later. Keeping hundreds of military personnel quiet -- after retirement -- ten years after seems far-fetched to me. Yet Kristina Borjesson wrote that book almost five years ago.

See, this isn't about a plane crash; it's about a coverup by the corporate media.

Ted Kennedy asks his Republican colleagues: "What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?" Watch it:



This would be an excellent question to ask our two miserable excuses for Senators from Texas, who have been filibustering the minimum wage bill.

-- Molly Ivins has been hospitalized in her continuing struggle against breast cancer. My family, as some may recall, is going through the same thing at the moment. My advice to Molly fans: say a little prayer (or whatever you say in this circumstance).

-- the Scooter Libby/CIA leak trail has been diligently live-blogged and summarized by Jane and Christy at firedoglake. Here's the two most recent entries. The end of the week's two revelations were: a) Scooter being thrown under the bus by Cathie Martin, former Cheney spokeswoman (and current deputy communications director for the president) ; and b) Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett have been subpoened to testify.

-- The Iraq escalation will 'work' this time, according to the president, because he "told them it had to."

Really.

It's not even clear who he is referring to when he says "them". Is it the generals? the Iraqis? I no longer believe it's alcoholism affecting his thinking. The president is just plain delusional.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Help Lara Logan

From: lara logan
Subject: help

The story below only appeared on our CBS website and was not aired on CBS. It is a story that is largely being ignored, even though this istakingplace verysingle (sic) day in central Baghdad, two blocks from where our office is located.

Our crew had to be pulled out because we got a call saying they were about to be killed, and on their way out, a civilian man was shot dead in front of them as they ran.

I would be very grateful if any of you have a chance to watch this story and pass the link on to as many people you know as possible. It should be seen. And people should know about this.

If anyone has time to send a comment to CBS – about the story – not about my request, then that would help highlight that people are interested and this is not too gruesome to air, but rather too important to ignore.

Many, many thanks.


(Work-safe but not child-safe)

Hat tip to Matt Stoller.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Belatedly linking for choice

Since I'm tardy here are few of my favorite postings from others:

Blog for Choice Day - January 22, 2007

Agonist (Ian Welsh):

... (C)hoice is non-negotiable issue for me. I've been pro-choice ever since I first thought about the issue as a teenager.

The reason is elemental, as it is on both sides. If I were a woman, I would want to have the choice available to me. I would want to control my body. Without that ability to control her own body, a woman loses a certain amount of freedom.


MyDD (Matt Stoller):


The right to an abortion is about the right for women to control their own lives, and I won't accept any arguments that suggest that women shouldn't have the right to make very personal decisions or should have to make them in some sort of legal jeopardy. That's just immoral. I'm all for legislation reducing the number of abortions through legal assistance, economic help, and sex education, though I would point out that these tend to decrease all social ills and so I would support them for other reasons as well. But anything that makes the state sanction abortion as anything but an intensely private choice by women (and men to a lesser extent) in a vulnerable and difficult position in their lives is wrong, wrong, wrong.


Digby:


I come at it first from a fundamental belief in civil liberties. It's clear what the "right to life" agenda is and it has nothing to do with the fetus these people pretend to care so much for (until its born.) It has to do with sexual behavior. ... I'm a big believer in the fundamental argument which is that if women don't own their own bodies they are not free. It's just that simple.


My Left Wing
(Lilian M. Friedberg):


When my mother was "forced"--not once, not twice, but three times at least--to bring a child into the world which she could not feed, there were no aspirations to be abandoned, no childhood dreams to be shattered, no adolescence or naiveté to be lost: that had already gone down the tubes when she became the primary breadwinner in the family as a teenager--waitressing and cleaning houses to feed and clothe her younger siblings.

I was also the product of rape. Marital rape. It must have been a very difficult decision for my mother: this child, to keep or not to keep. She kept. Even though she could not afford it. Even though she must have known what she was keeping was a lifetime reminder of rape--and of her own inability to "provide"--for yet another "unwanted child".

We both bore the scars of that decision-and to this day, I cannot tell you whether her decision was right. I've written about it ; many a time.


Mahablog:


Not one pro-life organization in the United States that supports the use of contraception? If you cruise around their web sites, you see that even those groups that don’t explicitly oppose the use of birth control don’t support it, either. For example, you can search the National Right to Life web site for a kind word on the responsible use of birth control until you turn purple; it isn’t there. But as Cristina Page documents, many state chapters have taken firms stands in opposition to any form of birth control.

Is there a corresponding degree of fanaticism on the pro-legality side? Not that I have found. No pro-legality association suggests that abortions should be forced on women who don’t want them. No pro-legality group I know of advocates abandoning the gestational limits on elective abortion set by Roe v. Wade. Not NARAL, not Planned Parenthood, not any of their affiliates. Instead, “legals” work to preserve the legal rights outlined in Roe v. Wade. And Roe v. Wade allows states to ban late-term elective abortions and place some restrictions on mid-term abortions. The notion that Roe v. Wade allows a woman to waltz into an abortion clinic and terminate a third-trimester pregnancy just because she feels like it is not, and never has been, true. Yet pro-legality organizations often are accused of being just as absolutist and extremist ...


Norbizness (from two years ago):

As a uterus-free person, this may be my first and last post on Roe v. Wade, but the disingenuous, historically fallacious, and insulting column by David Brooks (other comments here) required a little clean-up and attention. ...

When Blackmun wrote the Roe decision, it took the abortion issue out of the legislatures and put it into the courts. If it had remained in the legislatures, we would have seen a series of state-by-state compromises reflecting the views of the centrist majority that's always existed on this issue. These legislative compromises wouldn't have pleased everyone, but would have been regarded as legitimate.

First of all, I live in Texas. In this, the year of our Lord 2005, we are trying to rip foster children from the loving homes that gay and bisexual couples are providing for them. I'm pretty sure that the 14 million women in this state would be enjoying no such right, nor would they be getting bus vouchers for the nearest state that would (California? Iowa?). The idea that the religious right would have never developed as a political force in the absence of Roe v. Wade is absolutely nuts; they were there all along and would have fought state-by-state to assert their political power.


Planned Parenthood's Lobby Day at the Texas Capitol is February 28.

Monday, January 22, 2007

The candidate left out in the cold

There have already been several lively conversations regarding the focus of the Texas Democratic Party’s 2006 election strategy, its perceived success or failure, who’s responsible and how to fix it and so on. If you need the backstory, begin there and return here.

David Van Os has made his feelings well-known about the missing support of statewide Democratic candidates from the state party’s apparatus. As anyone who read here occasionally over the past year was aware, I served briefly as the Van Os for Attorney General campaign director for a couple of months in the spring of 2005, and after that in a reduced capacity as statewide coordinator due to my illness (diabetes mellitus with neuropathy in both feet) and my going business concern (annuities brokerage). Here’s a few more places you can go to catch up on DVO's POV if you need to.

But this posting isn’t about that campaign or even that candidate; this is the story of Janette Padilla-Sexton, the woman who ran as the Democratic nominee for HD-144 in southeast Harris County against longtime Republican incumbent Robert Talton.

Here’s the briefest of biographical data: strong progressive (early Dean presidential campaign supporter, among many activist roles), technical writer for the United Space Alliance, single-income homeowner. A citizen-activist for Democrats and progressive causes, she had no prior elective experience and no visible means of campaign support, but her early announcement for the primary might have scared off attorney Rick Molina, who instead challenged -- and lost to -- Ana Hernandez in neighboring HD-143.

Padilla-Sexton also suffered during the campaign season from a variety of physical ailments which ultimately precluded her from active campaigning: meniscus tears in both knees, a misdiagnosis of osteoarthritis resulting in additional and unnecessary doctor’s visits, hospital stays, incorrectly prescribed medication and so on. She did suffer from arthritis as it turned out but not in that particular knee; she also developed high blood pressure, obstructive sleep apnea and some pre-diabetic conditions.

But that wasn’t all she suffered from: several Houston-area Democratic legislators made promises of help of all kinds, but when she called to take up those offers, her calls went unanswered and unreturned. There were some people who leveled with Padilla-Sexton: state representative Garnet Coleman told her that he and his colleagues had discussed her race and come to the conclusion that they could not assist her because “they had to work with Bob Talton on regional issues”. (I contacted Phillip Martin, Coleman’s chief of staff, for a response but my queries went unanswered.) Mostly she got the cold shoulder: Rep. Jessica Farrar was effusive in her initial offers of assistance, but declined to return phone messages when the time came to help. Padilla-Sexton also reached out to Harris County commissioner Sylvia Garcia (mentoring), Sen. Rodney Ellis (about an air quality question), Rep. Scott Hochberg (regarding state education funding), Sen. Mario Gallegos (for adding credibility to her campaign) and Rep. Rick Noriega (for general help and direction), but none of those people returned her calls, either.

So she soldiered on, spending a total of just $8,000 $13,000* -- virtually all of it her own money $8,000 of her own money* -- on her race, and finished with 40.5 per cent of the vote on November 7th. Talton spent about ten times that. Here’s how she performed in comparison to other statehouse Democratic political novices:

Ellen Cohen: 54.70%

Sherrie Matula: 42.29%

Kristi Thibaut: 41.76%

Janette Sexton: 40.55%

Diane Trautman: 39.87%

Mark McDavid: 38.73%

Chad Khan: 32.61%

Dot Nelson-Turnier: 29.93%

Scott Brann: 29.1%

Pat Poland: 25.00%

Sammie Miller: 22.8%

It’s worth noting that Cohen raised $500,000 for her campaign, with the assistance of many of the previously named legislators, an army of volunteers and the wherewithal to take a ten-month leave of absence from her position as the director of the Houston Area Women’s Center. Thibaut, an adroit fundraiser, collected $150,000 and also a core of vigorous volunteer support. Matula, who ran in neighboring HD-129, benefited from the teachers PAC and strong efforts from the Bay Area New Democrats, Area 5 Democrats and Battleground Democrats -- all clubs that could have chipped in volunteer assistance to Padilla-Sexton as well -- enabling her (Matula, that is) to have extensive blockwalking and phonebanking. BAND, to their credit, provided robocalls to Janette’s campaign. John Cobarruvias, the president of the club, admitted that BAND’s efforts were stretched too thin over the Bell, Lampson and Matula campaigns to provide much in the way of anything extra. So with virtually no help and no resources – no money, no volunteers, consequently no direct mail, blockwalking or phonebanking, not even any campaign literature – Padilla-Sexton performed fourth of eleven political novices. Trautman, McDavid, and Khan all had greater resources and performed less well in their districts.

I believe the overall conclusion is that HD-144 was ripe to flip, but none of the power brokers believed it, and consequently none of them decided to try to make it happen. Privately, I was told disparaging things about Padilla-Sexton that I won't bother rehashing here. So could it also have been her fault, as a candidate with initial shortcomings made worse by her health issues? Possibly. Her experience nevertheless adds evidence to the opinion that there are many Texas Democrats who are just too timid to challenge a variety of status quo beliefs: taking on an entrenched Republican no matter how extreme (perhaps in order to avoid the same sort of challenge in their own districts); a state party structure managed by a couple of inside players controlling the selection and momentum of their perceived “winners”; a governing body (SDEC) which has abdicated its responsibility to hold accountable the unelected decision-makers; and finally the perception that Texas Democrats simply aren’t committed to make a winning effort across the board, no matter the odds.

That’s a defeatist state of mind. It’s a loser’s mentality, or in the words of Chris Bell, a strain of battered-wife syndrome. It flies in the face of Howard Dean’s rather successful 50-state strategy, and ultimately provided very limited Texas results in a year of watershed electoral change across the rest of the United States.

So maybe it was a 49-state strategy, come to think of it (without blaming Dean for leaving Texas out).

I’m sure it’s just coincidence: Matt Angle, the political consultant taking the most credit for the narrowly targeted 2006 legislative strategy, served as chief of staff to former US Rep. Martin Frost -- ejected from Congress in Tom DeLay’s 2004 redistricting gambit -- who was also defeated by Howard Dean in the race for DNC chair.

Bob Schrum would be so proud.

Update (1/24): Easter Lemming provides the verification and the financial corrections, noted by asterisk above. (He worked on Janette's campaign, so it's not quite accurate to say she had "no" volunteers, either). And Stace throws in his dos centavos as well.

A blog is born (and less weighty matters)

Put your hands together for Feet to the Fire, a collaborative effort by some of my favorite people -- including me, of course. Muck will be raked.

-- Another of the Astros journeyman hurlers who sent the team into their glorious 1980 playoff run, Vern Ruhle, passed away at MD Anderson over the weekend. I thought that Ruhle was a tremendous pitching coach and felt bad when the Astros canned him in 2000, coincidentally the same year they began play in Enron Field Minute Maid Park. Crawfish Boxes has a nice compendium of stats (like always) and an old baseball card. Vayo con Dios, Vern.

-- As more global warming news warns, the fair-and-balanced pushback manages to get itself into the Chronic. Shame on you, Eric Berger. All the conservative freaks in town will continue to think the newspaper is too liberal, so you may as well quit trying to appease them.

I'll have more than these bite-size pieces later on as I'm sitting around doing nothing but scratching where it itches all day. (Pajamas media, indeed. I'm wearing sweats.)