Perhaps some citizen will try to arrest Rove while he's in town today

They have tried to do so before, after all.

Here is the itinerary for today's Fugitive Fundraiser Tour. He's raising money for Terrified Texas House Republicans.

What is the nature of Karl Rove's security detail when he attends these things? Is it more than the local police? Contracted bodyguards? Blackwater?

Who's paying for it? He's not a government employee any longer, after all. Why are local police and taxpayer funds used to pay for the protection of a man who is in comtempt of Congress, among his many other crimes?

Disavow yourself of the notion that any Texas Republican wouldn't sell his daughter into white slavery just for the opportunity to stand next to Herr General Rove. The local right-wing freaks live for this shit.

Do you think they run people through metal detectors at the downtown Aquarium?

Isaac Hayes 1943 - 2008

With his lascivious bass-baritone and flamboyant wardrobe, Hayes developed a musical persona that was an embodiment of the hyper-masculine, street-savvy characters of the so-called blaxploitation films of the era. In his theme song to Gordon Parks’s “Shaft” from 1971, the title character is summed up in a line that has become a classic of kitsch: “Who’s a black private dick/Who’s a sex machine to all the chicks?”

(Furthermore: “He’s a complicated man/But no one understands him but his woman.”)

The “Shaft” theme won an Academy Award and has become one of his best-known songs. But Hayes’s career stretched far beyond soundtracks. For much of the 1960s and into the ’70s he was one of the principal songwriters and performers for Stax Records, the trailblazing Memphis R&B label, and in the 1990s he revived his career by providing the voice for the amorous and wise Chef on the cable television show “South Park.”

"Chocolate Salty Balls", also on the South Park Christmas CD ...

He penned soul classics like ''Hold On I'm Comin''' for Sam & Dave, helped usher in the era of disco and was a goldmine for countless hip-hop and R&B artists who used his illustrious arrangements as the focal point for their songs decades later. ...

His influence also extended beyond music. His trademarked bald head, full beard and muscular frame, often adorned with a multitude of gold chains, made him a fashion trendsetter at a time when most of his contemporaries were sporting blowout Afros. He was also a symbol of black pride, and an activist for civil rights. ...

Hayes also acted in movies including ''Tough Guys,'' ''I'm Gonna Get You Sucka'' and ''Hustle & Flow.'' He had recently completed the movie ''Soul Men,'' in which he played himself; the film also starred Samuel Jackson and Bernie Mac, who died on Saturday after a bout with pneumonia.

I wou;d really like to have the rest of the week off from posting obituaries.

The Weekly Wrangle

Here's the TPA Blog Round-up for the week just passed, and check out The Truth About Texas Republicans, a new blogger-powered website designed to expose the real truth about GOP Texas legislators. The opening posts look at the stuff state representatives Dwayne Bohac, Betty Brown, John Davis, Bill Zedler and State Sen. Mike Jackson don't want you to see.

refinish69 was happy to introduce a real progressive Democrat to the readers of Doing My Part For The Left a few weeks ago, but has to wonder how to describe Michael Skelly: Democrat or Republican Lite?

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at the Texas State Teacher's Association lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency for giving public funds to private institutions.

Irony Alert: Mary McDaniels, Manager - Pipeline Safety, Texas Railroad Commission, lied on camera about the Atmos Energy gas pipeline couplings. She spoke in Fort Worth about pipeline safety, inspections, and regulations for Chesapeake Energy's Barnett Shale pipeline, says TXsharon at Bluedaze.

Julie Pippert at MOMocrats asked: "Offshore drilling -- whose issue is it anyway? The people's? Or the politician's?"

Women who enter the military know they may encounter danger along the way, just as their male counterparts do. Diarist Liberal Texas at Texas Kaos highlights an additional danger they face in Assault on Women in the Military, and calls on all of us to ensure that our fighting women are protected against sexual assault from the companions they should be able to trust.

WhosPlayin used to think John McCain was worthy of respect, even if he was wrong on issues. But mocking conservation and lying about Obama raising taxes demonstrate who John McCain really is.

jobsanger thinks Democrats should let Clinton's backers have their vote at the convention, and believes Barack Obama has a chance to win Texas this November.

Neil at Texas Liberal talks about AIDS and black people.

Due to the purchase of McBlogger by a rival blogging firm, the regular writers are on strike. This week we'd like to introduce you to a new McBlogger, Rose Petal.

North Texas Liberal remarks on John McCain's anti-Obama ad comparing the Democratic nominee to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, and also includes Hilton's response ad. Still waiting on Britney's energy policy...

Off the Kuff takes a look at The Queue behind KBH for her maybe-to-be-abandoned Senate seat.

YaGottaLoveIt of South Texas Chisme urges Barack Obama to have a fundraiser for money that stays in Texas while urging Hillary Clinton to campaign for Rick Noriega in south Texas.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the Williamson County DA's unwillingness to test DNA evidence in a 30-year-old unsolved murder case in Lawsuit Filed Against County For New DNA, Fingerprint Tests.

Tropical Storm Edouard was more like a decent rainstorm, but that didn't stop the media -- old as well as new, including madcap reporter/Congressman John Culberson -- from building it up to a height it could no more sustain than its winds. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has the roundup of the hyperventilating in Houston.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is concerned about the economy in "Purses Tighten, Small Business Suffers, Families Budget".

nytexan at BlueBloggin wonders, as the Georgian-Russian war continues and Bush plays with U.S. athletes at the Olympics ... Could The U.S. Get Pulled Into Georgia’s War?

XicanoPwr discusses the immigration survey that was sent to presidential candidates Obama and McCain put together by The Sanctuary, a web-based grassroots community of pro-migrant, human rights, and civil-rights bloggers.

Late Edition Funnies

EV 8/10: Attack ads work

Let's give the Sunshine State back to McBush, but no other changes from last week.

<p><strong>><a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/'>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>

McInsane went into the gutter, and it appears to have worked for him. Whooda thunk?

This in spite of a raft of data denouncing the ads.

So the question begged is: who's telling the truth? The people who say the ads aren't working, or the people being polled?

Here's my humble O: the attack ads are working, and they work particularly well on a portion of the electorate that wants to vote for McCain if he gives them a good enough reason to do so, i.e. the former GOP base who has been disillusioned by Bush, the wars, gasoline prices, the value of their suburban tract home (if they are still in possession of it), etc. and so on. These people despise Obama and the Democrats even more than they do all of those things, but are likely to sit this election out unless they see a Republican party willing to go on the offense against him (and them).

Voters are motivated by a politician -- a political party -- that will fight. Wonder if the Democrats have ever considered that strategy?

Solzhenitsyn, McCullough, and shortly, Newman

Far, far too much sad news this past week:

There remains among Western commentators a surprisingly persistent mythology of Soviet rule. This depicts Stalin as the usurper of Lenin's revolutionary asceticism, with Khrushchev and his successors tempering the bloodiest excesses. In reality, the grey bureaucracy of Khrushchev and Brezhnev laid claim to the individual mind. It defined political difference as mental illness.

On being released from the camps, Solzhenitsyn became the voice and dramatist of the zeks, the prisoners who languished in a system where the merest idiosyncrasy was an antisocial act. He became, with the dissidents Andrei Sakharov and Anatoli Scharansky, a towering moral witness against this system. And he was fearless.

I am reminded of that tiresome conservative canard about liberalism being a mental disorder as I read that last sentence in the first paragraph.

Bernie Mac blended style, authority and a touch of self-aware bluster to make audiences laugh as well as connect with him. For Mac, who died Saturday at age 50, it was a winning mix, delivering him from a poor childhood to stardom as a standup comedian, in films including the casino heist caper "Ocean's Eleven" and his acclaimed sitcom "The Bernie Mac Show."

Though his comedy drew on tough experiences as a black man, he had mainstream appeal -- befitting inspiration he found in a wide range of humorists: Harpo Marx as well as Moms Mabley; squeaky-clean Red Skelton, but also the raw Redd Foxx.

Saturday before last my wife and I attended a funeral service for a friend from college -- heart attack at 47 -- who was so much like Bernie Mac it was scary. Terrific smile, wonderful person, gone too soon. Fabulously funny, loved a good party, lived life to the max. Too many more parallels to iterate. His passing last week is magnified by Bernie Mac's this one.

Paul Newman has finished chemotherapy and has told his family he wants to die at home. ...

Yesterday, it was reported in America that Newman, 83, had only weeks to live and had returned home to his wife, Joanne Woodward.

"Paul didn't want to die in the hospital," a source said. "Joanne and his daughters are beside themselves with grief."

The source, described as a close family friend, said that the star had spent the past few weeks getting his affairs in order.

Never Forget: Bush gave up golf because it "just sends the wrong signal"

Three men to help him up, while his wife and daughter avoid even looking.

Legs spread wide, bouncing his knees, casting his eyes around, slapping his miniature American flag against his knee.

I have a feeling George, Jr. was the "Are we there yet?" kid.

Sunday Funnies (GOP slime edition)

John Edwards screwed the pooch

Sure I'm a little disappointed. Well more than a little. But there's shinola to be discerned ...

-- Don't you think he could've done better than this? Seriously? Christ, she looks like Eileen Smith. (That wasn't too screechy, was it?)

-- Now that the National Enquirer is reputable journalism, when do you think the traditional corporate media will begin reporting on Bush's alcoholism? And what it could mean for the next war he intends to start?

-- McBlogger picked a SCAB, and now it's bleeding.

-- Martha is posting peevishly, but the MOMocrats have a cooler head. So does Digby.

-- Who's going to keynote the Johnson-Rayburn-Richards dinner?

-- Sorry if I missed it; did somebody die as a result of John Edwards' lies? Is he still serving in the United States Senate? Introducing legislation such as the Marriage Protection Amendment?

Back in a moment to our regularly scheduled media frenzies, like the Olympics and the brand-new war between Russia and Georgia.

Olympic news

-- Pollution shrouds Beijing as opening ceremonies set

The wall of gray haze around the National Stadium and across the city cut visibility down to a mile. On the eve of opening ceremonies, Beijing’s polluted air took center stage Thursday as the most visibly pressing problem for Olympic organizers who had promised to clean up the Chinese capital. ...

The notoriously dirty air in this megacity of 17 million has been a leading concern since Beijing won the bid for the Olympics in 2001. China has poured 140 billion yuan—$20 billion—into “greening” the city, including doubling the number of subway lines, retrofitting factories with cleaner technology and building urban parks. But environmental efforts have often been outpaced by constant construction and increased traffic.

To help ensure clean air for the Olympics, Beijing officials imposed drastic measures in mid-July, including pulling half the city’s 3.3 million vehicles off the roads, halting most construction and closing dozens of factories.

-- Islamic group issues new threat

Police shut down the bustling bazaar in the capital of China’s restive Muslim region of Xinjiang on Friday amid threats from an Islamic group that attackers might target buses, trains and planes during the Olympics.

A sign at the entrance of the bazaar in Urumqi did not explain why the area, surrounded by mosques with minarets, was off limits as the country prepared to kick off the Summer Games thousands of miles away in Beijing.

Even a KFC restaurant in the shopping area—filled with touristy shops selling carpets and jade—was closed, and a guard sitting on the steps shooed people away.

The sprawling, far-flung western region of Xinjiang has long been a source of trouble for China’s communist government. The rugged, mineral-rich territory is populated by the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority that has had tense relations with the Chinese. Many Uighurs favor independence or greater autonomy for Xinjiang, which takes up one-sixth of China’s land mass and borders eight Central Asian countries.

-- Bush dedicates new embassy, scolds Chinese on free speech

Speaking on China’s turf the very day it hosted the opening of the Olympic Games, President Bush on Friday prodded the communist country to lessen repression and “let people say what they think.”

The president’s challenge, issued as he dedicated a massive new U.S. embassy in Beijing, capped a volley of sharp exchanges between the two nations this week about China’s human rights record. ...

Bush came to Beijing mainly to watch U.S. athletes compete and enjoy the spectacle of the summer games, but a round of political one-upmanship has heavily defined his trip to Asia. He bluntly criticized China’s human rights record in a speech in Thailand, which prompted China to warn the U.S. president to stop meddling in its business.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang admonished Bush just before he got to China.

“We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries internal affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues,” he said. The spokesman added that “Chinese citizens have freedom of religion. These are indisputable facts.”

-- Human rights protests in Hong Kong

A British man was taken away after unfurling banners that denounced China’s human rights record on a major bridge in Hong Kong ahead of the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremony Friday. ...

Matt Pearce, a longtime Hong Kong resident from Bristol, England, hung two banners on road signs on Hong Kong’s Tsing Ma Bridge that said, “We want human rights and democracy” and “The people of China want freedom from oppression.” ...

TV footage showed Pearce wearing a mask of a horse’s head and a white shirt bearing the Olympic rings while carrying a guitar. His protest ended after about an hour when men in plainclothes hustled him away. ...

Olympic organizers moved the equestrian event from Beijing to the former British colony of Hong Kong because of a rash of equine diseases and substandard quarantine procedures on the mainland. Hong Kong has a prominent horse racing scene.

Oh yeah, there will be some athletic competition going on also.

TV coverage of Fast Eddie worse than the storm itself

Ken Hoffman is dead solid perfect:

1. With the possible exception of the new TV commercial with Big Oil whining that they're really making very little money (yeah, right, and Hooters doesn't want you to notice their waitresses), nothing on TV is funnier than our local stations promising calm, reasoned coverage of approaching storms and hurricanes ... and then hysterically screaming, "The sky is falling! Run for your lives! Women, children and weathermen first!"

2. The 10 p.m. news: Channel 11 went to its bullpen and dusted off Dr. Neil Frank as Tropical Storm Eduardo "inches toward" the Gulf Coast. Anchorman Greg Hurst said Dr. Neil would "put everything in perspective" for us. I wonder how Channel 11's chief weatherman Gene Norman feels about Dr. Neil showing up for the big story? It's like Norman quarterbacks the team the whole season, but Dr. Neil is brought out of retirement for the Super Bowl.

3. Channel 13 weatherman Tim Heller predicted winds of 50-60 mph when Edouard touches down. During Rita, Heller looked like a kid who lost his puppy when the hurricane missed us. It would have been his first big story since arriving in Houston. So it was slightly understandable. ...

4. Whoa, Channel 2 just headlined a story "Survival Checklist." Survival? That's a little hysterical, isn't it? The weatherman said the storm surge would be 3-4 feet. That's not life-threatening, that's rad surfing, dude.

5. Do all the stations do a story from the same Home Depot, or do they spread the free plugs around?

6. I'm watching the Astros game live from Wrigley Field. The weather is much, much worse in Chicago. Lance Berkman just saw a lightning bolt and tucked tail and ran into the dugout. He'll never be a TV reporter. No guts, no ratings.

7. (11 p.m.) Channel 11's Vincente Arenas is on Galveston Island. He just held up a gizmo that measures wind speed. It said 8 mph. You know that ceiling fan at the West Alabama Ice House that gently stirs the air? That's 10 mph. ... Have you seen the billboards for McDonald's new Southern-style Chicken Sandwich? The sign says, "available seven days a week, including Sundays." Hey, if you're going to flat-out steal Chick-fil-A's sandwich, right down to the pickles, you might want to show some respect and not mock Chick-fil-A for giving its employees Sunday off.

8. (After midnight.) At the risk of making a prediction that could backfire, especially if Edouard strengthens and causes pain to our area, I'm saying the storm will be nothing but a heavy rain. I like to err on the side of danger. Caution is for amateurs. ... Why don't my neighbors turn off their sprinklers? It's going to pour buckets Tuesday.

I walked the dog about 2:30 a.m. and it was warm, muggy, and as still and quiet as you would expect it to be at two-thirty in the morning. The storm coverage anchors had all turned in at midnight -- saving their sputtering for the 4 a.m. flash report, I presume -- so there was the usual nada (infomercials) on the tube. I surfed the net until I got sleepy again at 5, sliding off comfortably in the awareness that we weren't going to be endangered no matter what the talking heads on my teevee said.

It was a nice day off. I'll take a hurricane like that any time.

Edouard "inches", "creeps", "plods", "slogs"...

... even "ambles". In some places along the Texas Gulf coast (probably Jefferson County) he is "pounding" and "hitting".

Some are live-blogging -- zzz -- some are Twittering (this is a sample from yesterday's rehearsal, creativity courtesy Julie P at MOMocrats):

8 AM AM
Woke to screaming wind

8:01 AM
Never mind, it was kids, not wind

8:02 AM
Kids were screaming because they heard the wind

8:05 AM
Gave kids prebought premade preservative and sugar laden scones from store.
& bottled water. B/c we dump health and eco @ first sign of mother nature

8:07 AM
Breakfast didn't last long

8:12 AM
Sugar hit, storm too. Kids and winds are engaged in howling competition

8:14 AM
Will keep you up to date until power goes ou...

10:28 AM
Power's back

11:04 AM
Fish are in the yard, and power's flick...

6:22 PM
Everyone's heading to the beer garden in Clear Lake Shores to swap downed
tree stories!

Obviously it never got this bad. Like the batteries and the MREs, we can always save it for the next one. One last thing, from Congressman John Culberson's e-mail newsletter yesterday (bold emphasis his):

Dear Friends,

Tropical Storm Edouard appears headed our way; and some predictions suggest we could start feeling the effects of the storm sometime after midnight tonight.

After the destruction of Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, Houstonians know that no tropical storm should be taken lightly. While the winds may not be as strong, the rain can be even more devastating.

Here are some tips I follow to keep my family and home safe during hurricane season:

...

Lie on the floor under a table or another sturdy object.

My batshit conservative Congressman, lying under a table in his house, Twittering.

I can easily picture that.