Monday, April 25, 2022

"Because These Rats Won't F*ck Themselves" Wrangle


Before Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton and their associated players get started on this week's bullshit, it might be useful to remember some -- there aren't enough pixels to document all -- of that which they stirred, threw, and wiped all over themselves from last week.


Every time I see a picture of the attorney general like this, I feel an intense urge to apply a Will Smith-style slap upside his head... but only to see if it might straighten out his eye.


Let me wrap this segment as it began: with shit.


Should that be my segue to a few environmental tweets?


The legal and criminal justice tweets begin with a round-up of the Crimestoppers corruption scandal, the breaking story at the end of last week.


The organization also enjoys close relations with Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who donated $500,000 to the non-profit— which has a room in its headquarters named for the DA’s Office.

Keep pulling Ogg's thread, keep finding more crap.  I'm especially not one for people who smirk and gloat over capital punishment.


That would be "Houston Chronicle public safety reporter" -- I despise inappropriate capitalization -- St. John Barned-Smith.  (I thought I'd do a little of Matt Bramanti's pedantry for him here.)

Moving on, but staying here ...


Our teachers are still getting the short end of the stick.  Maybe Abbott's task force is going to come up with something besides more persecution.


Here's some housing news that doesn't mention evictions.


And a few more social justice pieces at random.


Oh yeah, there's early voting for some elections going on now.

Most municipalities and other local governments in Texas have races on the ballot, although municipalities may cancel elections in cases where no position is contested. Voters will choose mayors in dozens of Texas municipalities including Denton, Galveston, Harlingen, Lubbock, Port Arthur, Victoria and Waco.

Special elections in HD147 (Safe D) and CD34 (Lean R) will fill the unexpired terms of former Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) and former U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Brownsville), respectively. Both elections will be held in those districts as they were configured for the 2020 election cycle. This creates a pickup opportunity for Republicans in CD34 because the Democratic nominee for the general election, U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzales (D-McAllen), could not run in the special election. Republican nominee Mayra Flores is a candidate in the special election, which could result in her challenging Gonzales in November as an incumbent.


And a couple of eye-roll items.


Concluding this extended Wrangle with two soothers.

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Sunday, April 24, 2022

Sunday Evening Funnies: Free Speech (mostly)

I saw a few toons while wrangling my collection this week that paid emphasis to this point below.

"The Left" here is what I and others refer to as ShitLibs.  They're Triple-D Democrats with a Ukrainian flag and a sunflower in their social media bios (ironic because that's long been the US Green Party's logo), but they're blind to the Israeli government's atrocities in Jerusalem and the West Bank.  They're irritated about Joe Biden's miserable polling, especially among their children and grandchildren, and simply don't understand why they can't find good-paying jobs with benefits in the president's booming economy.  'Booming', that is, before the supply chain disruptions exacerbated by two years of a global pandemic, and more recently the war and the price of gas and the worsening inflation.  All Putin's fault, as we know.

Amazon unions?  Is that why my Prime went up again?  Are the Republicans still talking about Hunter's laptop, or is it Tucker's nuts this week?

(So do folks like these populate your feeds despite your best efforts to ignore, mute, block, and scroll very fast past?  Why, yes, PDid, they sure do.)

I think I can almost see this from a conservative's POV.  Oops, no.  Lost it.  I will grant you that the Republicans are a lot better at this; they're masters of communication.  Goebbels Lite, with hundreds of thousands of keyboard warriors  typing monkeys waiting for the command.
It's not the heat, it's the hypocrisy.

Okay I'm done. End of rant.
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Sunday Funnies Morning Edition: Earth Day, Elon, Masks, Twitter, Tucker


Yes, there will be an afternoon edition.  The toonists really outdid themselves this past week.

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Saturday, April 23, 2022

Earth Day Wrangle


I did not see as much urgency associated with the pending fate of the planet's inhabitants as a result of previous bad decisions as I expected yesterday.  I saw a lot of "Happy Earth Day", as if the occasion was akin to 'Mac and Cheese Day'.  I saw the by-now-predictable performative actions from politicians local and national.  So I'm more than a little disillusioned today.  And while I collected and posted an enormous amount of tweets that are, simply put, bad news ... it appears that's not what drove engagement on my timeline yesterday.  So rather than keep screaming into the void, I'll discard those and share a few of the things that made me feel hopeful.


Funnies tomorrow, and much more negativity in the pipeline.
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Friday, April 22, 2022

"We Have Issues" Wrangle


Enough for a few subscriptions, and not just those associated with the climate emergency or the vast depth of the corruption in state government.

But that's our jumping-off point today.


This news must have been painful for Fox's Groogan to break.


Here come the tabs for Governor ASSTax's border crisis.


ProPublica's team did the digging on two decades' worth of political stuntery on the southern border, going back to Rick Perry's re-election campaigns.


But racial hatred is what Texas was fought over and founded on.  Why should we expect there to be any change after almost 200 years?


I have a lot to get to, so I'll put more Earth Day posts in a separate Wrangle.  Here's more news from the RGV.


And here are a few legal, criminal, and social justice updates.  Alex Jones hit the trifecta in this category.


Between ShotSpotter and this, it shan't be long before Mayor Sly interviews Tom Cruise to head up a local Department of PreCrime.  With Democrats like these in Texas, who needs Republicans?

Which brings me to Kim Ogg.


Ogg IS a Republican.  She won't be coming out of the closet until she runs for re-election in 2024, but the leopard's spots can't be changed.


It wasn't enough that her assistant DA defeated him in the primary last month; she wants him off the bench six months early.

Ogg has -- like so many DAs before her -- devolved into a megalomaniac.  Harris County Democrats are going to have to do better two years from now.  I'm looking at YOU, HGLBTQ Caucus.

A few more of these:


Edinburg Politics reported that the Orwellian-named Texas Privacy Act was overturned on a First Amendment violation by US Judge Robert Pittman last month.  Techdirt followed up on the amicus brief filed against Texas at the Fifth Circuit regarding free expression online.  And with some developments on women's right to choose ...


Notably, not Kim Ogg of Harris County.  More from Alternet on the tipping point of Oklahoma's abortion ban, and the Texas Signal on the Frontera Fund's promised fight.  All power to Wendy Davis and her lawsuit, but I am past the point of believing she is an effective advocate for anything.


"Texas Republicans Behaving Badly" features the usual lineup.  I'll add the cops also.


Lots more but running long so I'll close on the calm-me-downs and promise more later.

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Monday, April 18, 2022

Earth Week Wrangle

I'll get to the depressing stuff and the rotten people in just a moment.  I'll begin today with the Chron's feature of Willow Waterhole, the former coastal prairie turned rice field turned detention basin turned into one of the best green spaces in Houston.  And it's right across the street from my house.


Please peruse the pictures and read the story.  There was a music festival weekend before last that seems to have finally raised the profile of the area as a destination spot.

Here's your Black History read.


Yes, I opened with the calm-me-downs first because the state news last week was just so...


And if these conservative serpents weren't bad enough...


Jessica Shortall collected tweets from politicians who put their logos on Good Friday images.  And the San Antonio Current reminded us of that time Chip Roy wanted to steal the 2020 election.

But Texas Democrats are badly positioned to take advantage of the worst Republicans in the world due to their infighting and incompetence.  SocraticGadfly offered thoughts about the Texas Democratic Party leadership battle.  Stace at Dos Centavos provided insight after Beto O'Rourke called out the Biden administration on the repeal of Title 42.

With Earth Day coming, I'll post frequently on ecological topics this week.


"Build the Ike Dike" is a running, unfunny joke.

Here's a few legal updates:

Texas 2036 presented some actual data about crime in the state, while the Texas Observer did more digging into the arrest of Lizelle Herrera.


Meanwhile, actual socialism is coming to the state capital.


And a few more lighter items/Texana to close today.

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Saturday, April 16, 2022

"The Easter Bunny is Species-Fluid" Funnies

"I'm Starting A Big Special Submarine Operation Now!"
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Easter Egg Wrangle


Click the tweet for the full view.


Greg "Abbott is The Crisis" decided -- in what he believes was a demonstration of his foreign policy skilz -- to resolve himself after the week of domestic terrorism he inflicted on the nation's economy.  Let's survey the damage.


No shortage of disaster-related adjectives.  There remains, astonishingly, some question as to whether Governor Helen Wheels will pay a political price.


After everything that's happened this year (the erosion of women's rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, children's reading rights, etc. ad nauseum) that Texas businesses large and small have voiced both loud and mumbled objection to, on which side of the fence will Lone Star corporate leaders and their PACs be dumping fertilizer?  We all know that ATT hasn't changed their plans.

Sidebar: after I kicked Kuffner in the shins for lazy-ass blogging, he came back with a respectable post.  Although "I'm at a loss here" and "I don't know what else to say" is more of his -- and Texas' and all Democrats' -- by-now-predictable weakness in confronting fascism, "it's a start" (another of his go-to tropes).

I'm not through with ASStax Abbott yet.


Okay, that's enough for today.  It's a holiday weekend, after all.  Let's turn to some other dumbasses in the news.


The seditionist calls are coming from inside the House (and Senate).  And apparently the Democrats on the January 6th committee are just too scared to do anything about it.


Not a good look for the Texas Central folks when the project still has public disapproval in the Republican hinterlands to overcome.  Maybe they can join the chorus of whining on the Right about onerous property tax burdens and garner some sympathy.


A commercial threat by Mr. Tesla that slipped under the radar this week, what with all of his -- and everybody else's -- histrionics.


Fucking W Bush.


Tempted to go with a Kuffner quote, but I'll pass.


The southern border, as we should all know by now, is not being invaded.  The people who are seeking asylum there are fleeing for their lives.

Here are your organizing/action items.


One calm-me-down.

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Thursday, April 14, 2022

The Political Stunt Express Wrangle from Far Left Texas


Let's do a duopoly politics update.  We have to start with Governor Border Crisis, because he's all the rage this week.


As has been the case for the past 25 years, the Republican goober's Democratic opponent is failing to capitalize on the mistakes and meanness of the incumbent.


Beto and his people are useless.  "Touring an empty warehouse" -- that'll really draw the cameras -- while Abbott bused asylum-seekers halfway across the country for a publicity ruse after creating miles-long truck traffic jams at border entries, aggravating the nation's inflation crisis.  The man in the wheelchair has yuge Trump energy.  (Clue: This is how you do it.  I predict a staff shakeup soon.)

Here's a polling round-up.  I see that Chuckles hasn't gotten to them yet, probably because he's busy with those community college candidate interviews and bicycle trail updates and scolding the media for noting Ted Cruz's latest culture skirmish.


BTW, regarding Cuellar...


Hidalgo is pushing back defiantly against the charges leveled against her staff.  (One more example for O'Rourke in how to fight back.)


But she and all the rest of Team Blue have enormous headwinds.


Not the least of which is Joe Biden's albatross around their necks.

One more thing before moving on: the story of Pee Bush's -- and by extension his family's -- pending political demise is officially overtold.  These fetishes by the state's media are reminiscent of the way they fawned over Matthew McConaughey last year, and before him the Castro brothers for numerous cycles.  Get over yourselves, starfuckers.  Even Texas Republicans don't care about the Bushes any more.  Once he's defeated, we'd all like to see you write about the people who are running for office who aren't corrupt, or pandering, or demonstrably ignorant and stupid.


Here's the environmental news.


And as typical, a lot of social injustice developments.  Guns up first.


I am in dire need of some pleasantry.

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