(I dropped the national Jackasses in a vat of bubbling grease
back here.)
This aggregation is reserved for our less aged and yet just as incompetent state and locals who are mostly serving as tackling dummies for a rapacious gang of junior MAGA Republican Christofascists in the Texas Lege. Democrats running Harris County Commissioners Court and City Hall also continue to exhibit an ongoing but still shocking lack of immunity from malfeasance and unforced errors. And they spend entirely too much time telling us how hard they are fighting back as their losses pile up like corpses in Gaza.
This dead Donkey's for you, Lone Star Dems. The good news is you have all the liberty you could possibly want to pray in public over the body.
The 89th Legislative Session lurches to an end and the best we can say is that a very large number of heinous bills have died agonizingly in committee, or under an avalanche of POOs, or subdued by the numerous shattered gavels of
Speaker Burrowed. Texas Dems voted for the lesser evil over
David Cook in January and by Gawd got exactly that. Without much in the way of contrast,
Gene Wu became House minority leader, replacing
TMF, and was never, ever too busy to give us relief from his insipid social media.
The real disgrace falls, as it nearly always does, on those who sell themselves out.
Public school finance -- vouchers, teacher pay -- generated much heat before and during the session which sadly came to no good end for our children nor their educators. IMHO no bill's passage will galvanize more opposition to those Democrats AND Republicans who voted in favor of SB3. The animosity I'm seeing from the electorate is bipartisan, and I expect to see it translate into retribution at the polling place in 2026.
Maybe that's a bright spot. Too soon to say.
One thing that isn't too early to reveal is that while
Vikki Goodwin is a fine state representative and has taken the early initiative to challenge
Nanny Patrick on his
cannabis con, I won't be voting for her -- or any other Texas Democrat -- on the basis of 'not MAGA'. I don't do lesser evil voting, and neither should you.
There's the same old trouble in Bayou City, as Harris County Democrats, who finally rid themselves of one dirty DINO (
Kim Ogg) continue to feud viciously with each other.
I like
Hidalgo but she has brought a lot of stress on herself, attempting to reward her friends with contracts and perks and such. I truly don't know why she keeps doing that and I wonder whether she's long for the job for a variety of reasons.
Garcia -- or more probably
Briones -- seems eager to push her out and run for judge themselves, certainly alongside Ogg's pal
Annise Parker. Then there's
John Whitmire, perhaps Houston's lousiest mayor (for which competition has been stiff going back decades). He got elected with the assist from the Harris GOP scum, lesser-evil voting him in over
Sheila Jackson-Lee, who returned briefly to Congress *ahem*.
It's all a nastier cesspool than the Ship Channel turning basin.
If you must subject yourself to this toxicity, your best follow for the infighting is
Neil Aqueeno (I'm not mocking him; that's how he pronounces it), who once told me that
blogging about local politics was a traffic killer. This was when he was still calling himself '
Texas Liberal' and his most-clicked post there was about Shamu, the killer whale at Seaworld. I note he's also not calling himself a rank and file Democrat any more, FWIW. All that and his relentless,
Egberto Willies-styled self-promotion (I'm guessing for his own council run in the future?) aside, he remains a committed activist and a solid blogger. And he's capable of evolving, which is certainly more than can be said of
Shell Kuffner, who's more obsessed lately with measles than even campaign finance reports.
So ...alternatives?
For the love of Mike,
run for something. Just not as a Democrat or a Republican. That is, if you are of the mind that voting or elections is still something that can be counted on to make change.
Mission accomplished some time ago, Clay. It was a bipartisan effort.
