Thursday, September 12, 2013

KXL: When you've lost the hedge fund billionaires...

... you probably deserve to lose.



Unexpected environmental activism coming from the one percent: Billionaire investor Tom Steyer said he is backing a four-part, $1 million advertising campaign aimed at convincing viewers the Keystone XL pipeline will hurt the economy and communities and should be blocked. See his first ad above.

“Foreign countries will get more access to more oil to make more products to sell back to us, undercutting our economy,” Steyer, founder of the hedge fund Farallon Capital Management LLC, says in the advertisement. “Here’s the truth: Keystone oil will travel through America not to America.”

The evidence against this boondoggle just keeps piling up.  Maybe a 1%er has the clout to cut through the BS and make the case that the president needs to hear (and support).

The curious case of the missing domestic partnership benefits in Houston *update*

Noah at Texpatriate.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Mayor Parker has doubled down on her calls to institute a comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance protecting LGBT people in Houston.

Do go read the Chron piece and then pick it up with Texpat again. I'll excerpt.

When Mayor Lee Brown took office in 1998, he issued an executive order forbidding municipal employees from discrimination because of sexual orientation. In 2010, Mayor Parker took office, she expanded this to also include gender identity. The San Antonio ordinance, by comparison, prohibits employment discrimination in all forms and bans all city-condoned discrimination, including in public housing.

Gay rights has a somewhat long and tumultuous history in this city. In 1984, the City Council, under the leadership of Mayor Kathy Whitmire, passed an ordinance protecting municipal employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation. The next year, voters strongly disavowed the ordinance, in an epic moment of homophobia that climaxed with Louie Welch saying the solution to the AIDS epidemic was to “shoot the queers.”

Mayor Brown restored the protections in 1998, and attempted to push through a domestic partnership package near the end of his career, in 2001. At that point, a charter amendment was approved –with a mere 52% of the vote– to ban any “plus-one” benefits for municipal employees. If 2001, the height of the culture wars and homophobia, could only muster 52% in support of discrimination, a repeal effort would surely cruise to victory today.

Noah goes on to observe that Parker (and Ben Hall and Eric Dick) have all straddled the fence on this issue. I can't say that the equivocation surprises me.

In our bloggers' luncheon with the mayor last week, this topic barely came up.  In fact I have nothing in my notes at all about it, though do remember some brief mention.  (We spent several minutes on annexation, for some ridiculous reason.)  You may recall that CNN's John King raised it with Parker in a personal way, asking when she would be able to marry her partner Kathy in Houston.  Watch the video again to see how she dodged the question with her answer.  For his part, Ben Hall did speak the truth in the same segment when he said "Anybody who brings up that issue, I think, misserves the city."

Most of the city's largest corporations now offer domestic partnership benefits, which in strange irony makes them more liberal than the City of Houston.  And as I have posted before, 2013 has been a very good year for gay people all across the country.  But the progress locally seems to have stalled out over the past decade. 

As far as the current election season goes -- and to be brutally candid about it -- there isn't a single mayoral candidate that wants to publicly broach this subject in strong support or opposition.  And the reason is that they are all too risk-averse with segments of the electorate that have strong views about the topic -- and are at diametric odds.

Because there will be a runoff anyway -- sorry, but you're wrong again, Bob -- and because both the HGLBT Caucus and the one headed by Dave Wilson carry significant influence and votes in Houston city elections, all of the candidates with something to lose are going to 1) march in the Pride Parade and 2) refuse to go on the record about the San Antonio ordinance and its prospects for passage in Houston.

Which should tell you everything you need to know about leadership, and principles, and convictions (beyond simply getting elected, that is).

Update: From the comments, Texas Leftist provides the interview with Parker where she is on the record about San Antonio's non-discrimination ordinance. Here's the important part (Parker speaking).

I am unwilling to bring an issue forward when I know there aren't sufficient votes to pass it. A non-discrimination ordinance would be important, but I am more interested in seeing discrimination removed from our city charter.

The city is prohibited by charter from offering domestic partner benefits or from recognizing the domestic relationships of our gay and lesbian employees. It would require a vote of the citizens to undo. I hope Council will join me in placing it on the ballot at the appropriate time.

And here's Parker speaking again, quoted by the Chron.

"It is absolutely something we should do, and the majority of council members have publicly stated they are in support of a nondiscrimination ordinance," ... "But this is an issue that requires all of council to be engaged and agree it is time to move it forward. When it happens, we will do that."

Parker's spokeswoman Janice Evans said no action is expected before next year, and no specifics have been discussed.

Considering the time elapsed between quotes (April 2013 and September) and the momentum for equality that has been building all summer, let's leave the contradictions aside and take the more recent statement at face value.  What, then, are we waiting for now?  I know the answer to this question already: "after the election in November, and the runoff in December".

As a refresher, Houston's government is of the "strong" mayor variety. Nothing happens without the mayor's initiative.  Bill White's claim to fame as a leader was that he sought consensus before items came up at council meetings for a vote. So is there a majority on council in favor... or not?   Is the charter language really the primary hindrance, or is somebody afraid of what Greg Abbott might do?

Yes, the city charter should be revised, but the work done to have that on the ballot could have been undertaken a long time ago.  As in years ago.

Wayne (Texas Leftist) made the same point in April that I'm making now: in terms of advocating for non-discrimination, the time is now -- as in yesterday, or sometime in the past four years, and even in the six years before that, when Houston had another too-cautious, too-conservative Democrat for a mayor.

Update II: To clarify, it is a fair criticism of this post to to say that there is plenty of evidence of vocal support for a non-discrimination ordinance among council and the mayor. I could have written that there is "no evidence of support for holding a vote" on the matter, in order to have been the most accurate.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

GOP pantsed again by Obama

Everybody should be clear on the fact that I'm no great fan of this president (since at least 2009, by my own accounting), but last night ... he pulled the Republicans' Dockers down around their ankles once more. For the second time in two weeks.

He gave the only speech he could give, but with one little surprise: a concession to those of us -- on the right and on the left -- who have called for peace.

I have, therefore, asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path.  I’m sending Secretary of State John Kerry to meet his Russian counterpart on Thursday, and I will continue my own discussions with President Putin.  I’ve spoken to the leaders of two of our closest allies, France and the United Kingdom, and we will work together in consultation with Russia and China to put forward a resolution at the U.N. Security Council requiring Assad to give up his chemical weapons, and to ultimately destroy them under international control.  We’ll also give U.N. inspectors the opportunity to report their findings about what happened on August 21st. 

That's pretty much everything a pacifist could ask for (short of a unilateral stand-down declaration, anyway) at this juncture.

Of course, some people just can't be happy about anything.

As Dean Wormer of Faber College put it... fat, drunk, and stupid -- aka "No war! What? No war?! Coward!" -- is just no way to go through life.


Let's look at this 'Putin got the best of Obama' business again.  When John Kerry mumbled a recourse for Assad to avoid getting bombed a couple of days ago, that wasn't an oops moment, as it seemed at the time.

While it's not clear whether Kerry had planned in advance to make that remark on Monday, the concept had been first proposed more than a year earlier.

"This wasn't an accident," a top White House official told The Huffington Post.

A senior administration official confirmed that President Barack Obama and Putin first discussed the concept in Los Cabos at the G-20 in June 2012. It was then brought up again at the most recent G-20 in Russia; while world leaders were mingling after the first plenary session, Obama and Putin went to a corner of the room and spoke for nearly half an hour about Syria.

You just don't see a president give back to Congress a few decades' worth of accumulated executive authority, nor have we often witnessed a president pull back from the brink of war to let the diplomats have another crack at it.

No, the president didn't change anybody's mind about whether to bomb Syria. Those of us who oppose it still do; those who think it's a good idea still think that this morning.  What I don't get is how international diplomacy exercised to avoid an End of Days military conflagration -- allegedly -- is such a terrible development.

But then I don't suffer from Obama Derangement Syndrome.

To be fair and balanced, not everybody completely agrees with me. That hilarious John-Kerry-as-Mr.-Magoo moment does, however, seem to miss the point in the HuffPo article linked and excerpted above, and not because it was recorded a few hours before Obama took to the lectern last night.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Libs (both kinds)

Remember what I said a couple of months ago (scroll down) about Libertarians and Greens being closer together on the political spectrum circle, and Ds and Rs grouped on the other side? This latest development with regard to our next war is more about how that is evolving.

As the struggle to secure House votes for or against authorization for military strikes in Syria accelerates, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has started making plans to team up with isolationist conservatives to stop the resolution, TPM has learned.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has become the leader of the progressive resistance. He is planning an “ad hoc whip operation,” as he called it in a phone interview with TPM. That includes supplying other aligned members with talking points and giving them the names of undecided colleagues to lobby for a no vote.

Grayson’s office has also been in touch with staffs for Republicans who oppose military action against Syria, such as tea party favorite Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), about crafting an organized strategy for lobbying no votes.

It started with opposition to NSA spying, and has gained strength as Syria comes into focus.

How real are the prospects for a genuine alliance against action in Syria between progressive anti-war Democrats and isolationist Tea Party libertarians?

Dem Rep. Alan Grayson, a leader of the anti-war wing of the House Democratic caucus, tells TPM’s Dylan Scott he is organizing across the aisle to create such an alliance by gearing up an “ad hoc whip organization.” This sort of right-left alliance is often discussed but rarely materializes. But this time there could be something to it.

Here’s a way to look at it. I compared the current whip count of Members of Congress who are firm or leaning No votes on Syria right now, with the Members who voted Yes on the recent amendment to end bulk NSA surveillance that corralled a surprising amount of bipartisan support. The vote on that amendment — which was sponsored by GOP Rep. Justin Amash and Dem Rep. John Conyers — was perhaps the clearest demonstration of such a developing alliance we’ve seen.

The overlap is striking. I count nearly four dozen Representatives — from both parties — that are on both lists. In other words, even though it’s early in the whipping process on Syria, we’re already seeing substantial numbers of Members who voted to end NSA surveillance now coming out or leaning against action in Syria.

Overlook, for the moment, the deep hypocrisy of Republican war hawks turning themselves into doves since it's Obama now in the Oval Office.  (Lies about weapons of mass destruction suddenly concern them ten years after?  Really?!) 


Despite this two-faced duplicitousness, there is more common ground being cultivated among the far right and the far left than there is among partisan Democrats and Republicans.

It's not your father's two-party system any more.  Just be careful where you apply those labels.

Update: Glenn Greenwald agrees...

To say that there is a major sea change underway -- not just in terms of surveillance policy but broader issues of secrecy, trust in national security institutions, and civil liberties -- is to state the obvious. But perhaps the most significant and enduring change will be the erosion of the trite, tired prism of partisan simplicity through which American politics has been understood over the last decade. What one sees in this debate is not Democrat v. Republican or left v. right. One sees authoritarianism v. individualism, fealty to The National Security State v. a belief in the need to constrain and check it, insider Washington loyalty v. outsider independence. 

... and emphasizes the larger point: that establishment Republicans and Democrats in Congress are lined up together to advance the interests of the elite against the hoi polloi.

The latest in the mayor's race (hold your nose)

Ben Hall still wants to make crime an issue in the Houston mayoral tilt.


Hall doesn't seem to understand why nobody shows up for his grandstanding press conferences at a murder scene.  For the mayor's part, her spokesperson is going to respond anyway, and will worsen matters by being hyper-aggressive about every non-thing Hall says.

(Parker's spokesperson Sue) Davis called Hall's appearance at Denny's despicable and a dishonor to victim Greig Placette.

"He was a friend of mine and he died protecting some children at another table and he was a hero and I am personally offended that Mr. Hall would use Greig's death for a political purpose," said Davis.

I don't wish to minimize the fact that minority neighborhoods in Houston have a disproportionate share of Houston's crime statistics.  Hall, just trying to make something stick at this point, is specifically targeting those residents.  He's hoping that he can increase minority turnout enough to make a strong showing in the runoff, wounding the mayor's re-election bid in the first round simply by placing a not-too-weak second.

The facts: Houston's statistics are contradictory as to whether crime is increasing or decreasing, and any increase in 2013 is probably attributable to Houston's exploding population growth as much as it is anything else.  As UH-D CJ prof Clete Snell put it...

"To take advantage of a decline in crime politically or to try to use an increase in crime politically, I think, indicates a lack of knowledge about how the statistics are developed," Snell said. "There's just many, many factors that can impact the rise or decline in crime."

Again... I'd like to feel something more than embarrassment about the state of play in the mayoral contest.  Both candidates are failing to talk about municipal topics of relevance to a real majority of Houstonians.  Hall isn't going to (perhaps he just can't) and Parker won't because Hall won't force her. The other eight candidates in the race are, as usual, on 'ignore' by the legacy media.  Update: If you've noticed the coverage of the New York mayoral race, with its mention of the multiple challengers just in the Dem primary, then you can understand how badly our local media has let us down in this regard.

Charles dissects Hall's "tuff on crime" tactic, while Stace is making the same point as I am with the mayor's acceptance of the SNAP challenge. And Texas Leftist has the rundown on that.

Monday, September 09, 2013

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance sends condolences to Sen. Wendy Davis on the loss of her father as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff encourages Sen. Leticia Van de Putte to join Davis on the Democratic ticket as the candidate for lieutenant governor in 2014.

Texpatriate interviews Annise Parker, the mayor of Houston.

Health insurance premiums may go up in Texas. Not because of Obamacare but because Rick Perry and the GOP didn't expand Medicaid. WCNews at Eye on Williamson shows that it's just More of the same from the Texas GOP.

Greg Abbott's appearances on Spanish language media so early in the 2014 gubernatorial campaign reveal he's taking nothing for granted, observes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows that Ted Cruz is just another batsh*t crazy Republican. No more. No less. Cruz doesn't care about anybody but himself. Certainly not other Latinos.

Neil at All People Have Value wrote about asking Houston Mayor Annise Parker if she would consider living wage legislation for Houston. All People Have Value is part of the website NeilAquino.com.

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

And here are some other posts of interest from Texas blogs.

Offcite continues its look at new school designs with a review of buildings from the 2007 bond referendum.

Jason Stanford marvels at Big John Cornyn's disappearing act, courtesy of his junior colleague.

Better Texas Blog starts the countdown to coverage with an overview of the health insurance exchange marketplace.

Concerned Citizens decries Bible-based bigotry.

Educate For Texas gives an inside look at the so-called "Texas Miracle" in education.

Lone Star Ma commemorates Women's Equality Day.

Texas Living Waters Project explains recent court decisions on groundwater law.

Egberto Willies had a video interview with an African American representative of the Tea Party at a Kingwood festival.

TXSharon at Bluedaze had the news that Josh Fox will be at free screenings of Gasland Part II in San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth later this month.

Grits for Breakfast asks: If Texas justice reforms were so great, why does the state still have the nation's largest prison population?

jobsanger had the poll results that demonstrated an appalling lack of understanding on the part of Americans describing themselves as Democrats and Republicans, and their knowledge about who controls Congress.

And finally, The Texican says that Houston abides.

Sunday, September 08, 2013

Sunday Funnies


Nearly half of Texas representatives undecided on Syria vote

"Hey man, is this possible global conflagration interrupting your video poker time? … Y'know what, Senator? Go! There's a Rascal scooter and a bucket of quarters with your name on it over at the Golden Nugget. You can play all the video poker you want. Instead of playing pretend poker in the actual Senate, go to an actual casino and pretend you know what the government should do."
-- Jon Stewart


John Boehner's answer on Syria is to hold more votes to repeal Obamacare


The NSA can access the data stored on your smartphone

Friday, September 06, 2013

Greg Abbott and Spanish language media

This is a very significant development.

In late August, the Austin Spanish-language TV station KAKW Univision 62 announced that it had topped all other broadcast stations, regardless of language, in July sweeps.

That station, along with the Univision stations in Houston and Dallas, was No. 1 among adults ages 18 to 49 in July for total day viewing, prime time and late local news, the network said, citing Nielsen Company ratings.

And nationally, Univision said it made history by finishing the July sweeps period as the No. 1 network in prime time for adults 18 to 49 and adults 18 to 34, the first time it had done so in any sweeps period.

“Número 1 is the NEW #1,” Univision wrote on Twitter in July.

As Texas’ 2014 campaign season heats up, candidates looking to reach Spanish-speaking voters are taking note (of the high viewer ratings Texas Spanish language stations earn), seeking out stations such as Univision even when they don't personally speak much Spanish.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican gubernatorial hopeful, appeared in late August on Conexión Texas, a public affairs show that debuted earlier this year on Univision stations around the state. Abbott, who knows some Spanish words but is not fluent, spoke in English as Spanish subtitles appeared on the screen. He talked about being married for 32 years to a Latina, and said he sees a connection between his values and Hispanic values.

Univision is a “huge platform for us,” said Avdiel Huerta, Abbott's campaign press secretary, adding that the campaign also regularly reaches out to the Spanish-language network Telemundo, as well as Spanish-language newspapers. 

Be sure you watch the video at the TxTrib link.

Abbott is demonstrating two things here: when you can raise a million bucks a month, you better not just sit on that wad; and if your party's sorest spot is correspondingly the opposition party's strongest, then go after it hammer and tong.

Oh, one more thing: if the electorate really is this stupid, then it's possible that someone as vile as Greg Abbott can persuade Latinos to vote for him because he's married to one.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

A bloglunch with Mayor Parker, and more on Medicaid expansion and Uber

-- As Neil has already mentioned on Facebook and at his new shop, a handful of us blogger types had lunch with the mayor at her office yesterday, and we covered a wide range of policy topics.  We promised Janice Evans and Jessica Michan that it would (mostly) be off the record, and nobody broached any politics or campaign issues.

So maybe I'll respond later with something about this, or this, but honestly... I doubt it.

There are so many better things to talk about that are meaningful, that would make a difference in the race, and the two front-running campaigns simply aren't going to discuss them.  This is why the lack of debates, or forums, or whatever they're called is so disappointing.

Just one example: the Texas Observer has more on the subject of Houston police brutality than you will ever read in the Chronicle, see on TV or hear on local radio, and much more than either of these two candidates will ever discuss.  The same is true of most every other topic you can think of that confronts the residents of Houston who are not wealthy.

Update: In a strange turn, Noah at Texpatriate inexplicably draws out mayoral challenger (and erstwhile also-ran in 2012 for Harris County Democratic Party chair) Keryl Douglas. That exchange, and a couple of Tweets from her, are as accusatory as you can imagine. For an attorney (I'm not one but she is), libel -- or something walking up to the line of libel -- seems a very weird way to open one's public communications as a candidate.

-- At the lobby day for expansion of the Medicaid program in Texas at the Lege last spring, I found a sympathetic Republican in John Zerwas. (His wife Cindy, just lost her battle with cancer a couple of weeks ago.)  Even if we have to wait a couple of years until the the next session, I'm holding out hope that Zerwas can persuade fellow R legislators with some financial math, and the Dallas News provides an assist.

Gov. Rick Perry’s rejection of Medicaid expansion will force private health insurance premiums to rise by an average of 9.3 percent for Texans buying coverage on their own, a new study finds.

GOP lawmakers, strongly encouraged by Perry, decided not to add poor adults to Medicaid’s rolls and that means about 1.3 million fewer Texans will have health coverage of some sort by 2016 than if the federal health law were fully carried out in the Lone Star State, according to a study by the nonprofit research organization RAND Corp.

Here's the breakdown.

With Medicaid expansion, the percentage of Texas’ non-elderly population that’s uninsured would drop in 2016 from 28.2 percent to 12.4 percent, they said. Obviously, that won’t happen. Still, the number of uninsured Texans will decline from more than 6 million currently to just over 4.2 million. With full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the number would have shrunk to 2.9 million. Undocumented immigrants can’t gain coverage under the law, so in states such as Texas and Florida, the uninsured rate will remain high, the researchers found.  

The free money from the feds didn't work.  Perhaps a bit of complaining from constituents who pay insurance premiums might get their attention.

(I know: who am I kidding? All this BS from the GOP about stopping Obamacare has nothing to do with rational thought.  Still, I just can't abandon logic.  Even a few appalling ignorant Republicans like Jan Brewer get it, for Christ's sake.  So if you pray, pray for Rick Perry's soul.  It might be the only chance he has left to make it to heaven.  Nah; who am I kidding?)

-- My two-part series about Uber last week drew considerable attention; Charles Kuffner has also written some posts on the topic, most of them ahead of mine (including two more back in July, when the news broke).  Via OTK, here's another comprehensive look at what Dallas is doing now, as we wait for Uber to begin in Houston.

Per a late addition to Wednesday’s meeting agenda, the Dallas City Council is scheduled to vote on a substantial city code rewrite that will redefine everything from who can dispatch a car to who can drive a limo to the cost of a limousine’s off-the-lot sticker price (has to be more than $45,000). And the city doesn’t want you to be able to order up a limo whenever you want: The rewrite, says the addendum, will “require limousine service to be prearranged at least 30 minutes before the service is provided” and establish “minimum limousine fares.”

The addendum item doesn’t come out and say it’s aimed directly at Uber, only that “the use of computer applications and other technologies by some providers of limousine service has distorted certain distinctions between limousines and taxicabs,” and that it’s high time the city “establish those distinctions to help the public understand the differences between those types of passenger transportation services.” City Hall also wants to be able to regulate drivers being dispatched via app.

But in a memo sent to city council Friday night, assistant city manager Joey Zapata is quite clear: This rule rewrite is all about Uber, with whom the city has been tangling since September. Says Zapata, the city told Uber in November that in order to operate in Dallas, it needed 1500 Marilla’s OK. At the same time car-for-hire companies and drivers were told that working with Uber was a violation of city policy. Uber, says the memo, was cited for “advertising a transportation-for-hire service without first being granted operating authority by the City.” Zapata says 31 drivers have been cited 61 times for “driving for an unauthorized service.”

Lots more at the link.

Barry Smitherman: worse than Abbott

Greg Abbott is going to be a shittier but smarter version of Rick Perry if he makes it to the governor's mansion next year, no question. And now there's a clone of Abbott's that seeks to replace him in the TXOAG.


Kennedy quickly reTweeted Smitherman's own self-promotion, then followed up with the above, and then in his column yesterday...

Talking about Texas’ resources, Smitherman said the state has “made great progress in becoming an independent nation, an ‘island nation’ if you will.”

And: “I think we want to continue down that path so that if the rest of the country falls apart, Texas can operate as a stand-alone entity with energy, food, water and roads as if we were a closed-loop system.”

Smitherman has made Brains updates previously; he was the guy who Tweeted out a picture of a hangman's noose beside the names of Republican senators who supported gun safety legislation last April, in the wake of the Newtown, CT school tragedy.

Smitherman was also the guy whose three children made 4-figure contributions to Rick Perry's presidential campaign in 2012. One of the Smitherman sons, a sophomore at Texas A&M at the time, joined his mom and dad in maxing out the federal limit of $2500.  Rick Perry, naturally, gave Smitherman his current job on the Railroad Commission after his loyal service on the Public Utilities Commission (to which he was also appointed by Rick Perry).

Barry Smitherman is as worthless overseeing Texas energy regulation -- that's the Railroad Commission's task, after all, and he's the chairman of it -- as tits on a feral boar. The Austin Chronicle had even more of Smitherman's TeaBagging atrocities...

(L)ast week Smitherman went hunting for anti-abortion votes with the Texas Alliance for Life. In a long-winded speech that started with comments about oil production (one must imagine the fundamentalists were agog for this), Smitherman suddenly took a sharp veer into conspiracy theory, blaming President Obama for China's one child per family policy. That was just the beginning.

In an extraordinary grab bag of extremist talking points, Smitherman predicted America's economic collapse unless attendees "encourage those of childbearing age (WHO ARE MARRIED) to have lots of children, and then support policies that support having lots of children." Note: That's his emphasis, not ours.

He had stuffed his policy blunderbuss with a plethora of applause points for the far right, not least that more fundamentalists breeding will cause the downfall of public schools. In Smithermanland, there will be new rules "making it easier for large families to leave failing public schools, pursue home schooling or online options, and eventually get a college degree. Moreover, he argued that people who don't have kids should take the brunt of the tax code. He said, "we should incent marriage and dis-incent single family households. … The federal tax code should reward large families, whose children will eventually pay lots of taxes, by increasing deductions for children, or placing families with children into a lower marginal tax bracket."

And he wrapped this all up with a pretty bow, in case you missed his point. "Don’t’ have sex until you get married, get married at a relatively early age, and then have lots of kids."

And this week, the secessionist talk. Smitherman is quite obviously trolling us all, TeaBaggers and the rest of Texans alike, with this Gohmert/Stockman mashup of the slimiest things he can pull out of his ass what passes for a mind in the Tea Party caucus.  Stay tuned; I'm sure he's working on next week's bulletin already, and there's still 8 weeks to go before election day!

But as Bud Kennedy notes, Democrats don't have a candidate yet, and the TXGOP has two other prospects for attorney general that are almost as freak-right-wing as Smitherman.

Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, has got much of the Texas Legislature at his back, while Sen. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney, has the blessing of Kelly Shackelford of the Liberty Institute, Americans for Prosperity chief Peggy Venable, and Texas Eagle Forum boss Cathie Adams (he also incorrectly claimed for a while that he has been touched by the hands of self-appointed king maker Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans.)

Can Texas actually elect a worse attorney general than Greg Abbott has been over the past ten years? Sadly, the answer is yes.

Update: Wonkette.

And of course, it’s just “being prepared for the worst” that’s motivating Smitherman to ramp up oil and gas production, fight environmental and labor regulations, and do everything possible to “[enable] the industry to produce as much as it can, as quickly as it can.”

You know, so they can fill up the big gas tank before they close the gates to Bartertown to protect it from the motorcycle gangs with mohawks. Also something something Obama EPA unconstitutional usurpation states’ rights, and global warming is a myth.

Update: Lisa Falkenberg with some more.

Speaking of those selfish feminists, Smitherman has a few words for them, too, though not by name. Toward the end of his speech, he addresses the protests that erupted at the state Capitol a few months ago as lawmakers considered tough abortion restrictions.

"All you had to do was see our people, who were civil and polite but persistent," Smitherman says, "versus the other side, which was satanic, evil and crude."

Best as I can tell, the "satanic" reference began with a young female demonstrator with funny glasses who got cute with the wrong video camera, and muttered "hail Satan" to the screen. I took it as sarcasm; the conservative blogosphere took it as confirmation.

And the good Christian Republican who wants to be your next attorney general took it as an opportunity to out-kook his rivals.

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

If you want to send a message, call Western Union

Conservatives among the general public are about to learn something liberals and progressives have known for well over ten years now: when it comes to opposing military intervention, nobody cares what you think.

Two top Republicans warned Monday of catastrophic consequences if Congress votes against striking Syria and suggested the White House may be mulling a more robust military intervention.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Republican hawks who have long advocated deeper US involvement in Syria's civil war, met President Barack Obama as part of his efforts to sell US lawmakers on military action.

McCain emerged from the meeting with a stern warning for fellow Republicans who may be considering voting against military action purely to damage the Democratic president.
"A vote against that resolution by Congress I think would be catastrophic," said McCain.  "It would undermine the credibility of the United States of America and the president of the United States. None of us want that."

Cover your ears and brace yourself for the "McCain is a RINO" caterwauling from the right.  The New Pacifists have a point; they just haven't connected all the dots yet.  Perhaps a cartoon will help.
Please note that the cartoon is a deep azure blue, and that the fellow portrayed is wearing large earrings.  In other words he's a classic Neoliberal, supporting the president in whatever he does... as Britney Spears once helpfully suggested.  He might have marched in an antiwar protest in the last decade or so, maybe even made the pilgrimage to Crawford and Camp Casey.  (Update: Yes, I understand the cartoonist possibly drew his subject with bifurcated ears and excessive lobes.)

But Obama inherited Bush's mess, you see, and besides Congress has completely obstructed everything he's tried to do in the past 5 1/2 years.  So bombing Syria is really not (going to be) his fault.

This is the part where I write, again: if you need an example of what non-voters mean when they say "both parties are just alike", this would be it.

But we're peering into the conservative hive mind here, so let's get back to that.  For some fairly horrifying anecdotal evidence, read this Facebook post by Rep. Ted Poe -- who represents both the Montrose and Kingwood -- but most certainly read some of the comments.  As many as your toxicity meter will allow.

Poe was already going to vote 'no', as will many other Republicans in the House, but that really isn't the point.  As previously posted, Obama is going to launch Tomahawks no matter what Congress decides.  And maybe something more, if you believe John Lindsey McGraham.

Graham, who is facing a tough primary fight from his right for the Republican Senate nomination in South Carolina, warned of the wider consequences of a failure to back military action.

"I can't sell another Iraq or Afghanistan, because I don't want to," Graham said.

"It weighs on the president's mind strongly about the signals we send," Graham said.

"(What) I can sell to the people of South Carolina (is) that if we don't get Syria right, Iran is surely going to take the signals that we don't care about the nuclear program.

See, it's clearly about what a Republican hawk with a Tea Party challenger can sell to South Carolina Republicans. Oh, and Iran.  And also Russia.  Which is to say, Putin.  Because he's been disrespectful to Obama.

So that message is going to get sent. (Some of us dirty hippies have seen this movie before.)

Update: Poll: 2/3 Of Britons Don’t Care If Rejecting Syria Action Damages Relations With U.S. Who's going to start calling the English "crumpet-eating surrender monkeys", and call for a boycott of spotted dick? The Neoliberals or the Republican hawks?

Update: When the WSJ is busting Robert Taft and isolationism on ya, GOP peaceniks, you've already lost the battle to not fight a war.