Tuesday, January 11, 2022

A Voting Wrangle for Taco Tuesday


First political things first: Houston and Austin have city council seats to fill, and those special elections are on tap.


Lots of Democratic supporters are throwing in to help Team Blue for the spring.


"Historic"?  Okay, whatever.  Kuff posted the D primary campaign interviews conducted so far.


With some thoughts on the ancillary issues affecting Democrats' prospects, Michael Li explains why the discourse about how the Donks have "won" redistricting misses a lot of the picture.  Rick Casey predicts the future following the ongoing 2020 election fraudit.  And Steve Vladeck observes that the vaccine mandate cases before SCOTUS are really about the future power of federal administrative agencies to regulate... anything.

Here's something I didn't see coming: the Texas Tribune finds a "bothsides-ism" in that TXGOP tweet about standing in line.


Is "owning the libs" really the same as obstructing democracy oligarchy/plutocracy?  Apparently that's the case on social media, according to the state's most prominent political outlet.  I'm sure Evan Smith and Ross Ramsey have been taking a lot of incoming fire from the Republicans in charge lately, being accused of librul bias and all, so it's important for them to find an angle that lets them mollify the freak right whenever they can.

 That's my segue to 'Republicans behaving badly'.


Luther does not understand the difference between Chinese students and the Chinese government.  I'm being charitable; she is obviously a bigot.  She's been thoroughly denounced -- if only by one brave Republican -- and she should lose and go back to styling hair after March 1.


Texas teachers could easily swing the November elections to the Dems, but they've been unable to coalesce their caucus, just like every other left-leaning outfit in Texas.  I doubt whether a midterm election with a deeply unpopular Democratic president is going to change history.


We've reached the Governor Fish Lips portion of this segment.


Can't leave the Texas Democrats' bad behavior out.


Ogg is bad news; has been since the start.  (You may be unable to view this due to privacy settings; here's what it refers to.)

I have too many COVID posts -- everyone who isn't dead knows that's the top story -- so I'll save them for later.  Here's the latest cannabis news.


The climate headlines:


And a few social justice items.


Forrest Whitaker begs you to please not mess with Texas rock art.

Some good people died; some bad people also.

Glasstire eulogized Ann Harithas, artist, curator, and co-founder of the Houston Art Car Museum.


One soother.