Culberson's questionable stock trades resurface in wake of Collins arrest

Congratulations to Lizzie Pannill Fletcher for the big break.

The arraignment of US Rep. Christopher Collins yesterday in federal court for violating the laws regarding insider trading is bad news for Trump, but five other Republican Congressmen, including  Texans John Culberson and Michael Conaway, are also caught in the undertow.

Via Raw Story, which counts them as six but that number includes Tom Price, who has cycled through the swamp faster than anyone, from Georgia Congresscritter to HHS Secretary to out on his ass cushy healthcare industry board job, i.e. lobbyist.  Raw Story's reporter also apparently didn't realize that the Houston Chronicle piece they mentioned but did not link regarding John 'Keeps His Word' first appeared in June of 2017 (it referenced Culberson's opponent only as a "research physician", aka Dr. Jason Westin).  Excerpt from the Chron:

Culberson says his interest in Innate was sparked by "press reports," though he has declined to specify which ones. News reports in January -- just before he and Conaway bought Innate stock -- focused on the controversy surrounding the purchase of shares at discounted prices by Collins and then-Georgia U.S. Rep. Tom Price, now (formerly) the secretary of health and human services.

An article in the New York Times in early January, two weeks before Culberson bought his stock, hardly inspired confidence. It described Innate as "a tiny pharmaceutical company from Australia that has no approved drugs and no backing from flashy venture capital firms." The piece also noted that the company had run out of money "more than once" and nearly folded.

On Capitol Hill, the focus was on Collins, who was being accused by Democrats of promoting Innate stock to colleagues in the halls of Congress. Collins has repeatedly denied the charge.

Earlier this month The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, published an "exclusive" report citing a half-dozen Republican lawmakers -- all speaking anonymously -- who said they heard Collins "talking up" Innate at various congressional gatherings.

Again, Collins denied it, telling The Hill, "I've never encouraged anyone to buy the stock. Ever."

A number of ethics watchdog groups and legal analysts say that if Culberson and other lawmakers were steered into their Innate investments with non-public information, they could be in potential violation of the Stock Act, which bans insider trading by members of Congress - whether or not they make money.

Culberson has declined repeated requests from the Chronicle to talk about the details of his Innate stock purchase, including whether he was still holding on to the stock Tuesday when its price plummeted. He has relied instead on a written statement that his investment was motivated by the death of a family friend from multiple sclerosis. He also acknowledged in a statement that he "rarely" buys or sells stock.

That admission has deepened interest in his decision to buy stock in Innate, a struggling biotech company that generally has been trading for less than $1 on the Australian Stock Exchange.

So Big Bad John has some 'splain' to do, and whether he does it to federal prosecutors or the Congressional ethics committee or the media or the voters of the 7th Congressional District ... well, we'll just have to wait a little longer and see.

Also from Bloomberg: "Charges Against Rep. Chris Collins Highlight Lack of Trading Limits for Congress".

At least one of the lawmakers, John Culberson of Texas, reported selling his holdings a few weeks before the company was privately informed in June 2017 of negative results from a clinical drug trial. When the news was announced, the company’s share price tanked. He said in a statement Wednesday that he didn’t have any inside information when he sold.

As for Conaway, the 11th District of Texas is a pretty safe one.  A quiet backbencher for most of his seven terms, Conaway took over in April from Devin Nunes (who you might have seen and heard on the news just last night) the Congressional 'investigation' into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, which includes collusion as well as election-related meddling.  Prior to that, he would have been in charge of investigating Collins, Culberson, and himself on these stock trades, as he was the House Ethics Committee chair.  And his Democratic challenger, Jennie Lou Leeder, while seemingly a good progressive -- the words 'single-payer' show up in the first sentence on her healthcare issues page -- is still, sadly, a long way from getting some traction.

But Ms. Fletcher and all the centrist Democrats in the Seventh ought to be waking up this morning feeling elated at their good luck and the fortuitous timing of these developments.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance blogs less about polling, fundraising, and the forthcoming November election and more about the social justice issues that are focusing our attention at this less-sweltering, less hurricane-threatened start to August.

Meanwhile, Harris County voters should not overlook the $2.5 billion dollar flood bond election, which has early voting beginning today Wednesday, August 8.

Here's the blog post and lefty news roundup.

In ordering the Trump administration to immediately begin locating immigrant parents and reuniting them with their children, a federal judge declared that the danger of creating "permanently orphaned children" will be "100% percent" the responsibility of the federal government.

Calls for a state investigation and to cease approving licenses for immigrant detention centers were made after a report that a toddler died after being released from a facility in South Texas, and allegations of sexual abuse of at least eight immigrant boys at centers in Arizona run by Southwest Key, the company that wants to open a "baby jail" in Houston.

Texas Standard wonders if Pope Francis' call to eliminate the death penalty will change any minds among Texas Catholics ... like Greg Abbott.

Gov. Abbott told journalists in 2014 that there was no conflict between his Catholic faith and state law on the issue. Now that the death penalty does conflict with your faith, will you oppose the death penalty @GregAbbott_TX @helenprejean

— Tom Wakely (@wakely1953) August 2, 2018

The Texas Observer has a report (.pdf) that shows that two-thirds of the state's high schools have failed to comply with a decades-old law to register their seniors to vote, leaving over 180,000 Texans off the voter rolls.  The problem is statewide, but concentrated in the Rio Grande Valley.  Texas Leftist has more.

At Texas Rural Voices, they understand that arming teachers is dangerous.  Yet they see it happening all over the state.

SocraticGadfly wonders why 25 House Dems and a Gang Greenish environmentalist group are recycling an old Ryan Zinke idea for new National Parks funding.

David Collins has some candid revelations about the state of mental wellness -- his and others'.

Pages of Victory defines his progressive and liberal terms.

The Militant reports that more than 500 people attended a July 24 screening of the new film “Santos Vive,” which documented the murder of 12 year-old Santos Rodriguez at the hands of a Dallas policeman on that day in 1973.

Officer Darrell Cain played Russian roulette with his gun, killing the handcuffed Rodriguez in the back of his patrol car.  Cain had arrested Santos and his brother David at their home, accusing them of stealing $8 from a soda machine at a local gas station.  Cain was convicted of “murder with malice” but served only half of a five-year sentence.  DNA tests conducted after the boy's death confirmed Santos was innocent of the burglary.

Alice Embree at The Rag Blog contributed her history to that of other '60's and'70's-era women activists in Austin in "Fight Like a Girl", featured in the recent edition of Life & Letters, a publication of the Liberal Arts College at the University of Texas.

Very Smart Brothas, one of the blogs at The Root, caught the mural in the Trinity Groves neighborhood of Dallas that depicts the Cowboys' Dak Prescott as being in 'The Sunken Place'.  (It was the quarterback's 'house Negro moment' in supporting his owner's and the NFL's position on national anthem protests that inspired artist Trey Wilder.)

And a Tom Waits song serves as muse for Harry Hamid's latest short work of mostly fiction.

Sunday Evening "Make Orwell Fiction Again" Funnies

Sunday Collusion Confusion Funnies

Eric Holder for president?

Been wanting to do a post about his germinating presidential ambitions since before he came to Houston in June for an "intimate, high-dollar fundraiser".  It's been almost two weeks since he was on Colbert and pseudo-declared, and he's said so again.

Once again I shan't bury the lede: Holder is in a three-way tie for first in my sports book for the 2020 Dem nom, and here's a few reasons why.

1.  Holder should bring back the voters who sat out 2016.

2.  Black Democrats, especially those of a certain vintage, are simply disinclined to support candidates on the left like Bernie Sanders.  They are more religious and more conservative, and older African Americans as we know turn out for Democrats like it was an extension of Sunday morning church service (which 'Souls to the Polls' is, of course).  If you need evidence, see Doug Jones, Alabama.  But this piece from Briahna Joy Gray about the awakening political power of the black female vote, more specifically credited with carrying Jones to victory, is direct and a must-read.  One short excerpt:

Recall that the majority of black women under 35 cast their lot with Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primary, and about 26% of black Americans identify as independents. Moreover, young voters of color disproportionately chose to stay home in 2016 rather than vote for Hillary Clinton. 

Extending the premise in the last sentence: millennials, especially in Texas, may be getting louder but still aren't showing up on Election Day (at least in the primaries).

Before these digressions get too far, let's return to Holder.

3.  I can vividly recall being at my precinct convention in the spring of 2008, where there were almost 250 people gathered (when there have been less than 10 at every one before and since) and listened to my black neighbors close to my own age say that while they respected Barack Obama's bid for the nomination, they simply could not support it because they didn't think the country was ready for a black president.  Which was why they were caucusing for Hillary.  (You may recall that Sheila Jackson Lee was also an early Clinton supporter ten years ago.)  Meanwhile, all the young white kids in my precinct were caucusing for Obama, and in Texas Clinton won the primary but Obama won the caucuses, so they wound up splitting the delegates.  Which is part of the reason the Texas two-step no longer exists, but that's also a digression.

The point -- so the logic goes -- is that America is ready for another black president to clean up everything that Trump has fucked up.  Not only that, but Trump, by trying to undo everything Obama did, has made it personal.  He is engendering a "blacklash" to Trump's 2016 "whitelash".

A reasonable enough premise.

To be clear, Holder would not be a Democrat I would vote for under any circumstance.  He could have prosecuted the banker gangsters in the wake of the Great Depression of 2008-09 despite whatever Obama wanted; the USAG has that independent discretion and authority (as Jeff Sessions and Trump are demonstrating).  In his post-Obama life Holder went to work for a tassel-loafered law firm, Covington Burley, whose clients include some of the worst corporations with a few of the biggest legal problems you can think of: Uber, Facebook, the NFL.  Yes, Eric Holder's law firm is actually defending the NFL's owners against Colin Kaepernick's lawsuit alleging their collusion/blackballing him from playing professional football in their league.

Another report has him going way too easy on the opioid manufacturer McKesson while he was the nation's top cop by exploiting his cozy relationship with their top attorney, who had previously worked at ... Covington Burley.

Some people might smell a quid pro quo somewhere in there.

But keep in mind that Democrats in 2020, no matter what happens in three months, are just gonna wanna win, and as Michael J. Fox said in a movie once, they'll crawl across the desert and drink the sand if they think they see an oasis -- even if it's a mirage.  The centrists combined with the black vote might be unstoppable irrespective of scandal, baggage, and misguided Obama nostalgia.  (He and Joe Biden both, for that matter.)  Still, I count at least two more strikes against Holder.

Holder has shown a tendency to play things safe politically. He has called the progressive push to eliminate the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency a “gift to Republicans” and is urging Democrats not to talk about impeachment on the midterm trail.

That last leaves him opposed to one of the very few people willing to spend tens of millions of his own dollars on Democratic infrastructure, Tom Steyer.  Here is the part where I echo Libby Watson at Splinter: Trust no billionaire.

Maybe—and this is just a thought—we shouldn’t have individual billionaires set the agenda for a political party, let alone one that’s supposed to represent working people (but doesn’t). A party run by billionaires, however good their intentions might be, will never do what needs to be done—like ending the existence of billionaires, just as a start.

So while it's possible Holder cannot withstand scrutiny of his record, stances, and ethical conduct, his fellow dark horses at this too-early stage are also flailing.  Wrecking both sides of her street, Elizabeth Warren outs herself as a capitalist.  Trump cannot wait to go all First Peoples on her, either.

Congressman Joaquin Castro, standing in for his brother, goes mealy-mouthed about ICE.  That's not helping Julian with their base, nor will it help any Latino who actually wants to be president (and not just vice-president) who stands off on this.  There is no raft of law-and-order Democrats -- forget "moderate" Republicans -- waiting to board this ship on a Donkey.

(The "Abolish ICE" political opportunity almost backfired on Democrats in Congress; they let the GOP instantly call their bluff.  But then they turned the tables on Paul Ryan, et.al., so maybe the Donks are not as dumb as they seem.  Republicans are masters at inflaming their base with promises they cannot keep.  So it's important to realize that it goes like this: Democrats outside of Congress should be the ones summoning the meager amount of courage to pass the litmus test; Democratic hopefuls committed to chasing the mythical crossover Republican voter are the ones leaving the chant and the hashtag to the activists.  Julian Castro -- assuming his brother is speaking for him; I can't find the former HUD secretary on the record -- is the wrong one of those.)

Kirsten Gillibrand might have an Al Franken problem.  And not with just George Soros but with women, amazingly enough.  The depth and breadth of these objections shocked me, and are excerpted below.

Many of these donors said that either they were unhappy with Gillibrand or knew plenty of people who were. The 2020 race is still years away, but as donors start to shop around, her comments on Clinton and Franken could be a factor.

“I viewed it as self-serving, as opportunistic ― unforgivable in my view,” said Rosalind Fink, a New York donor. “Since then, I have not purposely attended any fundraiser where she was there. And there is absolutely no way I will support her.”

Fink said she condemned Franken’s behavior, but she believed the Senate should have investigated the allegations thoroughly before forcing him out.

“I think it was a big mistake,” said Irene Finel Honigman, another Clinton donor from New York, adding, “I was not that impressed with her to begin with. I think she certainly had potential, but as for many people, this kind of sealed the deal.”

[...]

Susie Tompkins Buell, a major Democratic Party donor who has championed female politicians, also said she was reconsidering her support for senators who called for Franken to resign.

[...]

Jill Farber Bramson, a Democratic donor and activist in Michigan, said she knew a number of women ― who tended to be older ― who were deeply disappointed when Gillibrand spoke out against Franken.

“They had always really liked Kirsten Gillibrand very much,” she said. “They really respected her. ... They were just devastated that she pushed, they felt, all too hard and all too soon to have him resign.”

(You should read the full HuffPo piece for the context, including the many powerful Democratic female donors who defend Gillibrand.)

At Netroots Nation over in NOLA this weekend, a surge of ballot-stuffing centrists have propelled ... wait for it ... Terry McAuliffe into the lead over Bernie Sanders for their Crowdpac-sponsored straw poll for the 2020 presidential nom.  Kamala Harris is now third, with Joe Biden fourth and Warren fifth.  The rest, including those I've already mentioned above trail far behind.  As Kuffner says, 'it's a data point', but as usual, you can flush it after reading it.

Mark it Sanders, Biden, and Holder as the three front-runners with 2.25 years to go.

Alyson Kennedy for US Senator, Texas

Found someone I can vote for at the top of my November ballot.

“We invite workers and youth to join us knocking on doors in cities, towns and farming areas, discussing how we can rebuild the labor movement and forge the unity that is necessary for us to fight effectively,” said Alyson Kennedy, candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas. “We will join workers’ picket lines, fights to defend abortion rights, actions demanding prosecution of killer cops and protests against deportations, calling for amnesty for undocumented immigrants.”

Kennedy's name will not appear on the Texas ballot; she will be a qualified write-in, according to the statement from the Socialist Workers Party, via The Militant.  Hat tip Ballot Access News.

I would say that the SWP, being Trotskyite in origin and leaning today (though that is contentious internally; click for more) is somewhat to the left of where I find myself these days.  But the views of the candidate and the party are coming closer to mine than the centrist corporate Democrats holding a death grip on the Donkey Party.

Kennedy was the SWP's presidential nominee in 2016.  Here's an interview from then.



And another where she speaks about women's reproductive freedoms.  More:

She was among the first wave of women who broke the barriers that coal bosses used to exclude women from underground mining jobs. She has been part of numerous United Mine Workers union battles in the coalfields, from West Virginia to Alabama to Utah. From 2003 to 2006, she was among those in the front ranks of a union-organizing battle at the Co-Op coal mine outside Huntington, Utah. The miners there, a majority (of them) immigrants from Mexico, fought for UMW representation to win safe working conditions, an end to abuse by the bosses, and improved wages.

Kennedy joined the teachers on strike in Oklahoma this spring — part of a wave of battles across the country —  and the July 12 rally in Columbus, Ohio, where more than 10,000 union miners, Teamsters, bakery workers and others rallied to demand that the government fund their pensions.

If you recall, the Texas AFL-CIO hesitated in January to give Bob O'Rourke their endorsement.

Explaining the decision not to make an endorsement in the Senate contest, (AFL-CIO President Rick) Levy also said some members "had significant concerns about the congressman's commitment to fighting for working people and, unfortunately, he wasn't at the convention to address any of those concerns."

  

One of those concerns was likely O'Rourke's support in 2015 for allowing then-President Barack Obama to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement with 11 Pacific Rim countries. It was vocally opposed by labor unions — including the Texas AFL-CIO — who believed it would threaten American jobs. 

Ultimately the union caved, you know, because "not Ted Cruz".  O'Rourke gave one of his typical double-speak explanations for his TPP vote.

O'Rourke stood by his vote to give Obama so-called trade promotion authority, saying the choice was to let the Democratic president negotiate the deal or let it fall to Republican committee chairmen in the House. He noted it did not mean that he supported the trade deal itself, about which he said he still has "some outstanding concerns" regarding its impact on his El Paso-based district.

In other words, he was for it before he was against it.  

Obama's full-court press for TPP failed, but it succeeded in alienating union rank-and-file (because of the bitter aftertaste of Bill Clinton's NAFTA), and labor's resentment can reasonably be implicated as the primary cause of Hillary Clinton's defeat in the three Rust Belt "firewall" states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  This was no unforeseen upset; in July of 2016, over two years ago, the threat was on high alert.

That's a far bigger deal than Russian meddling on Facebook and Twitter.  It's probably a bigger deal than "misogyny", generalized.  It's probably even a bigger deal than the voter suppression we know about in Wisconsin and in Michigan (Vox's evidence disputes this).  Update: So does Carl Beijer.

(T)he case that Russian intervention was decisive ultimately depends not on anything we can see in the data, but on completely unsubstantiated theories about what's going on inside of the data, buried beneath an massive avalanche of statistical noise, bad polling, underdetermination, and pure fantasy.

It  was -- and is -- most certainly a greater factor than voting for a non-duopoly candidate.

And I like it better than simply undervoting the US Senate race.  I'm looking forward to seeing Ms. Kennedy swing through Houston.

Tuesday Toon: The Centrist Democrat's Dilemma

(Democrat pictured may or may not be Beto O'Rourke.)

The Weekly Wrangle

With less than a hundred days remaining before the November election, the Texas Progressive Alliance's blog posts and related news took note of the temperature rising on statewide candidates and debates -- or lack thereof.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs watched as Ted Cruz suddenly flinched, probably at his sagging internal polling numbers, and acquiesced to five debates with his surging challenger, Beto O'Rourke.

Socratic Gadfly gives his snarky lowdown on the proposed Cruz-O'Rourke face-offs.

Justin Miller at the Texas Observer sees Democratic lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Mike Collier with a problem: Dan Patrick ain't taking his bait.  The following excerpt reveals the reasons:

Patrick’s unwillingness to debate Collier is the calculation of an incumbent on his heels. Recall that Patrick debated his Democratic opponent, Leticia Van de Putte, in 2014 and even debated then-San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro over immigration policy, just for fun. Now, he has a lot to lose and little to gain from having to defend his anti-trans bathroom crusade on TV for potentially millions to see. With a huge incumbency advantage and an inherently favorable electorate, he has absolutely no incentive to engage with Collier on anything. Property taxes might be soaring around the state, but Patrick’s betting there’s nary a normal Texan who’d directly associate that with his record as lieutenant governor— and he’d prefer to keep it that way, for good reason. Patrick has blamed local officials for rising property taxes, passed toothless relief bills that don’t do anything, all while avoiding the real problem: the GOP’s endless anti-tax fervor has made it so that the state doesn’t have enough money to fund public education and other services.

Meanwhile, the TSTA Blog is not surprised by the lite gov's intransigence on making schools safer.

Both Patrick and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller were urged to stop ignoring their challengers and debate them by the Houston Chronicle's editorial board, but the Dallas News has a more pragmatic view of the likelihood of downballot debates (tldr; slim and none, and Slim just left town).  TXAG Ken Paxton has been notably duplicitous about squaring off with Justin Nelson.



Progrexas borrows the story from the TexTrib about Dem ag commish candidate Kim Olson's tribulations while serving in Iraq.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the allegations against Olson in 2006, and she discusses the episode at length in her memoir, “Iraq and Back.” But until the Austin American-Statesman published a story about the investigation earlier this month, the ignominious end to Olson’s military career had not figured in the race for agriculture commissioner.

(The AAS piece is the long read, and highly recommended.)

Every single post from last week at Grits for Breakfast also comes with a 'recommended reading' checkmark, but highlighted for the Wrangle is this take in Scott Henson's weekly roundup about the $7 million legal fight AG Paxton has waged to prevent air conditioning TDCJ facilities for the oldest and most ill of the state's incarcerated.

Ty Clevenger at Lawflog notes that some members of the Texas federal judiciary seem to be involved in a #MeToo moment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is investigating three San Antonio bankruptcy judges in response to allegations that they covered up sexual misconduct by the former court clerk and permitted retaliation against a whistleblower, according to records provided by a former employee.

Durrel Douglas at Houston Justice tells us about #ProjectOrange, which has as its goal to register a thousand people to vote who are behind bars.

Jonathan Tilove at First Reading sees the ongoing litigation against Alex Jones as an existential moment for fake news. 

Cary Clack at the Texas Observer implores Greg Abbott to do the right thing and remove that dishonest Confederate plaque from the Capitol.

Harvey Kronberg's Quorum Report has news about the TRS vote last week.

The board of the Texas Retirement System has reduced its assumed rate of return on its investments, adding another $1.7 billion liability to its pension fund.

The vote, an outcome of the pension fund’s most recent five-year experience study, lowers the rate of investment returns from 8 percent to a more realistic 7.25 percent, which mirrors recent economic outlooks. The decision, which has been discussed for a number of months, was no surprise to either teacher groups or the Texas Retired Teachers Association.

“The burden is now on the Texas legislature to step up and provide the necessary funding ... and give educators peace of mind that they will not face cuts in their pensions.”

Neil at You Must Act Right Now took part in a protest at the home of an owner of the location of the proposed baby jail in Houston.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston borrows a talking point from the GOP and condemns the use of the word "socialist".  (He's old; he doesn't get the new kids on the Democratic bloc.)

Hopkins County cattle rancher Karl Ebel is an East Texas Taoist philosopher preaching the gospel of preservation in Greensource DFW's latest installment of 'People and Prairies'.

The Texas Living Waters Project frets about the decline of the alligator gar.

The repeated spraying of both public visitors and winged migrants of a Hill Country refuge spotlights the dangers of uncareful pesticide usage, writes Monica Maeckle at the Rivard Report.

Chip Wells at Beyond Bones begins a series about lost or forgotten Houston sports history, starting with the baseball stadium that would not die (not the Astrodome, but close).

The Smithsonian has a fascinating reveal: according to recent artifact discoveries, there were people living in Texas pre-Clovis period.

Archaeologists have been hunting for signs of the first inhabitants of the Americas at an area known as the Gault Site outside Killeen, Texas, ever since anthropologists discovered signs of early human occupation there in 1929. However, due to poor management of the land, looting, and even a commercial pay-to-dig operation, over the years, many of the upper layers have become irreparably damaged.

Then, in 1999, the University of Texas at Austin leased the land and began academic excavations. Digging deeper, archaeologists found 2.6 million artifacts at the site, including many from the Clovis culture, once believed to be the first people to settle North America. But the latest discoveries to be unearthed at Gault are arguably the most exciting to date: unknown projectile points, which push back human occupation of the area at least 2,500 years before the Clovis civilization, reports Kevin Wheeler at the Texas Standard.

And Harry Hamid reveals more about his origins.

Sunday TDS Funnies

I thought the pearl-clutching was a nice touch ...

Ted Cruz blinks; five debates scheduled

A promising development for Bob.  Let's go to the best Tweets from #TXSEN yesterday, which trended nationally for awhile in the afternoon.

News: @TedCruz challenges @BetoORourke to five debates over the next three months, each on different topics https://t.co/gzNMPzBE02 #txsen

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) July 25, 2018

New: @tedcruz is challenging Dem @BetoORourke to five one-hour #txsen debates.

Each will be on a Friday night, focusing on a policy area:

🔘: Aug.31, Dallas
🔘: Sept. 14, McAllen
🔘: Sept. 21, SA
🔘: Oct. 5, Houston
🔘: Oct. 12, Lubbockhttps://t.co/C4IuKcYLNu via @toddgillman

— Forrest Milburn (@forrestmilburn) July 25, 2018

The paid politico POV (not unreasonable for once):

This is a sign that Ted Cruz's internal numbers are not headed in the right direction https://t.co/UMrxd1THMW

— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) July 25, 2018

Open this 7-count thread from Gadfly for a snark-laden rundown on the topics the two men will be talking about.

Well, if .@BetoORourke and .@TedCruz agree to five debates on these themes, here's what will play out 1/: https://t.co/9onrfWnhQU

— @realDonaldTrump 🌻 (@SocraticGadfly) July 25, 2018

And finally, the wagers are being offered:

Not at all. I’m telling you what the Cruz campaign thinks.

Let’s wager on the margin of #txsen to benefit @NavySEALfnd.

Over 6 I win. Under 6 you win. $500? https://t.co/5ewD0uJWFl

— Matt Mackowiak (@MattMackowiak) July 25, 2018

As Gadfly and I covered in yesterday's comments, we think the over/under for Cruz's margin of victory is closer to 56-44, so Mackowiak, perpetually the conservative MAGAt, wants slightly more than 53-47 to take half a grand from Demo consultant Joe Householder above.  No bet.

What this debate schedule does -- or should do -- is put pressure on Dan Patrick and Sid Miller to get off their high horses.  Don't expect anything like sunlight or fair play from Ken Paxton or anybody else down the ballot, however.   Should O'Rourke show out well and Cruz falter a bit, especially if our Cuban Canadian representative in the upper federal chamber holds to his 5-appearance commitment, and if the spin doesn't overtake the truth ... O'Rourke's rising tide lifts all Democratic boats.

Most importantly, it's not so much as August yet and everybody is paying attention.

Beto O'Rourke and Lizzie P. Fletcher

Here are the steps in every statewide race in Texas for the past 20+ years:

1. Shiny new Democrat declares candidacy, promises the moon, trashes incumbent Republican
2. Media churns out glowing praise, hope by the truckload
3. Early polls show Democrat within striking distance
4. Democrats get whipped into a frenzy, talk trash, make bold predictions about "Blue Wave"
5. Every Republican wins by double digits
6. Democratic officials claim moral victory
7. Democrats deny ever predicting their candidate would win
8. Media and Democrats blame the electorate for low turnout, inability to understand what's at stake, "voting against their own self-interest"
9. Repeat in 4 years

It looks like we are at step 4. Right on schedule!

We could probably add a 4.5 for 2018: "Democrats throw unprecedented wads of cash at the Great (Mostly) White Hopes".

I will not bury the lede to save the reading time of those who don't agree, much less respect, my opinion regarding the state of play for Democrats in Texas (and elsewhere) in the coming midterm elections.  The truth stings, sometimes as painfully as a Portuguese man o' war in the Gulf of Mexico.

I won't be able to vote for either of the two federal office standard-bearers for the Donks in November because they simply do not represent my values, and because they are far too interested in trying to win by seeking the votes of Trump-soured, moderate (sic) Republicans.

Beto O'Rourke is Third Way, lies about his PAC money (more here), whines about Ted Cruz not debating him when he refused to debate his own primary opponents, and can't get on board with a universal health care plan even though he claims to support such.

LPF is pretty much the same centrist stooge, except that she's gone a little further in the wrong direction, demonstrating antipathy to the working class.

Let me be even more candid with respect to Texas Democratic challengers running against incumbent Republicans: if I could vote for Dayna Steele, or Mike Seigel, or Adrienne Bell, Sri Preston Kulkarni, Linsey Fagan, Vanessa Adia, Jana Sanchez, or Julie Oliver,  I would do so in a heartbeat.  I could even vote for MJ Hegar and Gina Ortiz Jones (it would be a tough chew-and-swallow choking down their military/CIA histories, but I think I could manage it) .  Not Colin Allred, though.  Nor, for that matter, Democrats running in open seats like Joe Kopser and Todd Litton.

Even if I did vote for O'Rourke and Fletcher, they would not represent me.  They would believe that their strategy of running to the right succeeded, and their government service would reflect being beholden to the afore-mentioned centrist, corporate Democrats, and even moreso their friends just a bit further to starboard.

Bob O'Rourke, gifted a shopping center in El Paso's barrio for his birthday by his parents, proceeded while on city council to push out the poor people and gentrify the area, raising the value of his property accordingly.  That's how you make City Hall work for you, by Gawd.

LPF is practically James Cargas with a vagina.

I'll keep an open mind about them (in case they pull a few progressive rabbits out of their pussy hats) right up to the opening of early voting in October, but today I'm taking a hard pass.  Good luck to both nevertheless.  If their strategy works they won't be missing my vote anyway.

The Weekly Wrangle

The duopoly cognitive dissonance has been in full flower lately.  As Trump becomes more unhinged, as the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democratic Party ascends, the Old Guard feels more threatened, gets more paranoid, and moves closer toward former (?) Republicans like James Comey.  (Wasn't Comey the guy who did that thing with the letter that cost Hillary Clinton the election?)

Here's the Texas Progressive Alliance's roundup of blog posts and news from the week previous.

David Collins strongly advises those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and Russophobia to avoid watering the tree of liberty with hyperbole.

Socratic Gadfly offers detailed thoughts on Robert Mueller's indictment of the GRU 12 and what it does and does not say.

Somervell County Salon collects a few interesting bits and pieces about the hypocritical servility of John Bolton.

As debate season for the 2016 elections begins to take shape, the Texas Tribune reports that Lupe Valdez has agreed to debate Greg Abbott -- just not on the date that Abbott said he would debate her.  (Abbott, like Rick Perry before him, prefers gubernatorial face-offs that compete with "Friday Night Lights" ... so that few Texans are paying attention.)  Progress Texas notes that Ted Cruz is ducking a debate with Beto O'Rourke in the most Cruz-ish way imaginable.

State Sen. Don Huffines got into a contentious Twitter back-and-forth with state Rep. Poncho Nevarez over the Texas voter/photo ID law and left us with the impression that the harshest, most punitive law of its kind in the US doesn't go far enough.  This is why some observers have concluded that Texas isn't just a non-voting state; it's actively an anti-voter state.

As the week-long trial on the Texas fetal burial law wrapped up, the federal judge who will rule in the case gave indications of three things he will decide upon.

In news of the most ironic, Texas Department of Health employees will be working in a new environment after the building in which they have been located was found to have intolerable amounts of mold.

The Texas Observer reports that the Trump administration is unlawfully mistreating immigrant children at every stage of its detention system, according to new court filings.  Which is a vast understatement of the abuse they are suffering.

Seven Texas-based chambers of commerce, two pro-business consortiums and four prominent companies, including Southwest Airlines, filed a court brief asking a federal judge in Houston to reject Attorney General Ken Paxton's argument that the DACA program be ended.  They allege that damage to the Texas economy would amount to tens of thousands of jobs -- and hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues -- that would be lost if DREAMers' work status were revoked.

In the wake of the murders committed in Houston by a parolee who had removed his ankle monitor, Grits for Breakfast (and HPD chief Art Acevedo) asked the questions that challenged the conventional wisdom: are ankle monitors making anybody safer?

The discovery of human remains in Fort Bend County -- likely slaves and prisoners who worked on the sugar plantations there in the late 1800s -- made national and international news ... but was not news to one local activist.

Neil at We Must Act Right Now posted about confrontation and civility in our politics and society.

Harry Hamid sees something missing from her writing.

And The Rag Blog -- and Threadgill's World Headquarters in Austin -- invites you to Thorne Dreyer's birthday party on August 1.