Friday, October 16, 2015

Friday news and views (or: scattershooting a target-rich environment)

No canned hunts but lots of clay pigeons.

-- Sylvester Turner finally takes a body blow.  Whether it's a real damaging shot or too late in the fight for to affect the judge's scorecard, we'll find out shortly.  Early voting begins Monday; the only thing the polling has consistently shown is that there are still a lot of undecided voters.

-- Chucky no likey my petition to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to move the Super Bowl out of Houston if the city's voters reject HERO.  Meh.  I'll start another one if HERO loses, referencing the Final Four.  (That better?)  Juan at BAH says the ugly teevee commercial the haters are rolling is both right and wrong.  He's correct.  And John Royal spears the Texans owner with his helmet, but is not penalized for doing so.  Just a good solid hit, a fair football play as they say.  It's been hard work on Bob McNair's part to be a more foul POS than Bud Adams or John McMullen, but "mission accomplished", as one of his financial benefactors once flew a banner that said.

-- Hillary Clinton hearts Julian Castro.  As if this was a secret or something.

-- No court hearing today for Ken Paxton, but a portion of the turgid saga concerning his legal fate will be decided by the judge in writing later.  Update:

A district judge ruled Friday to release information related to the selection of Collin County grand juries to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s defense team.

The ruling by District Judge George Gallagher came over objections by special prosecutors in the case, who filed a motion to quash the subpoenas, saying the request was improper and not shown to be relevant.

Court filings indicate the defense seeks evidence to challenge the formation of the grand jury that indicted Paxton over the summer on two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register as a securities agent.

Special prosecutors say the defense won’t find any improprieties in the grand jury selections.

-- Paraphrasing Upton Sinclair: how can we help people understand something when their livelihood, especially in Houston and in Texas, depends on their refusal to understand?  Is this effort just trying to teach pigs to sing?  Grist asks an expert who has had some success with it.

-- When a Texas state representative accuses Bernie Sanders -- a Jew -- of being a Nazi, then you know that the GOP has really gone from the gutter to the sewer and have taken up residence in the septic tank.  It's not this sort of thing but also the actions of Donald Trump's supporters that increasingly denigrate the conservative POV.

-- Then again, the Democrats have their own ridiculous hypocrisy to overcome.  Did you read the Drone Papers yet?  Set aside a little time to absorb the impact (no pun intended).

-- Posted without comment, mostly because I'm without words to respond with: "The World’s Largest Detention Center Is For Black Jews Seeking Asylum In Israel".

-- Even fake football is corrupt, which must be why Phyllis Schlafly has put fantasy football on her list of threats to America, and why the two leading purveyors of the weekly games whose ads blitz every television program have been ruled out of bounds by the Nevada Gaming and Control Board.

-- See you at the East End Street Fest, where a presidential candidate will be making an appearance and my favorite charity, Barrio Dogs, will also represent.

5 comments:

Charles Kuffner said...

I didn't say I didn't like it. I said I didn't think the NFL would actually move the Super Bowl, partly for logistical reasons and partly because that's how they roll. They're not going to show up one of their own unless there's a sufficiently massive amount of public pressure on them to do so. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but much happier for it to become a moot point.

Gadfly said...

Holder: what a laugh. Saved the drone warfare piece for later reading.

Meanwhile, some of Bernie's backers are skating on the thin ice of conspiracy thinking, or at the edge of it:

http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2015/10/antisemitism-and-feelthebern-needed.html

Unknown said...

Paxton's not worried. have you seen the clip of his wife singing about how he sues Obama?

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=968140299914479&set=vb.123488374379680&type=2&theater

PDiddie said...

I have not (and thanks for the link, but won't) watched the video, have read a transcript of the lyrics of her "song".

Totally an SNL skit in that material.

PDiddie said...

By the way, y'all, you have to embed those links to make them hyper. I don't know why Blogger is so annoying that way. They used to do so automatically, have not for awhile.