Presidential nominating conventions month (#SeeYouInHouston)

It's that time of the quadrennial, with the GOP up first in two weeks -- the most interesting things will, as usual, be happening outside the Cleveland convention hall -- the Democrats following suit the week after in Philly, where the Berners will stage their last stand, and the GPUS right here in H-Town ("Houston, We Have a Solution!") the first weekend of August.  The Libertarians went first, in late May and in Orlando, nominating Johnson-Weld as their standard bearers, which earned them a CNN-televised town hall.

-- Trump is expected to tap a running mate as soon as next week, Clinton is finishing up the vetting process for her finalists, and Jill Stein is holding the door open for Bernie Sanders.  My suggestions (not quite predictions) are Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa for the Orange-utan, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia for Hillary, and former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich for Stein.  Note that each of these brings gender balance to their respective tickets along with some swing state influence, making them the most, err, pragmatic selections for their parties.

Update: Ernst really doesn't want the job and neither does Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, though the latter suggested Drumpf tap his daughter, Ivanka.  (Seriously, he did.)  So I suppose that leaves Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie.

-- I'll be assisting the GPUS team with social media during their convention.  You still have time to register to attend, secure lodging, and purchase meals in advance.  Here's the current list of workshops, with more on the way.

-- Charles has a good and even-handed post up about the latest in the Texas presidential developments and polling.  The remaining news to break that may move things one way or the other, besides the running mate picks, include:

• How FBI director James Comey's scalding condemnation/non-recommendation of prosecution of Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified email is being received by the electorate at large;
• Whether Drumpf can correct course with regard to Republican establishment acceptance, raise some money, or otherwise act like a serious presidential candidate;
• What Bernie Sanders is going to do; join the parade, stand and watch but not cheer, or get out and go Green.  This one seems easy to predict for me: he wants to be a Senate committee chairman in a Democratically-controlled upper chamber, so he's going to play along with the Dems but to some watered-down degree, managing to infuriate Clinton's base and his own at the same time.

-- It's never too late to call for opening the presidential debates to third party candidates.

James Comey saves Hillary's bacon

Takes the heat off Loretta Lynch and any federal grand jurors in the process.  It was a pretty harsh scolding the FBI director gave the former Secretary of State in his public statement moments ago, but that's all it was.

I don't think the fire has been extinguished, but the bad weather is blowing over.

In chronological order:

#BREAKING: FBI Director Comey says after tremendous amount of work, the FBI has completed investigation and handing off to DOJ for decision

— NBC Charlotte (@wcnc) July 5, 2016

FBI Director Comey: 110 emails in 52 email chains determined to contain classified info, 8 were top secret #7News

— 7News Boston WHDH (@7News) July 5, 2016

FBI Director Comey: Among emails not turned over by Clinton, 3 were classified at the time they were sent or received

— Dave Boucher (@Dave_Boucher1) July 5, 2016

FBI Director Comey says they believe "there was no intentional misconduct," in sorting of emails. https://t.co/RSoxnC72t5

— DJ Judd (@juddzeez) July 5, 2016

FBI director Comey calls Clinton and staff "extremely careless" in handling classified emails.

— Lou Raguse (@LouRaguse) July 5, 2016

FBI Director Comey: No "intentional misconduct" in connection with sorting of Clinton's emails. https://t.co/z9hQnKbdJg

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 5, 2016

FBI director Comey: Clinton "extremely careless" with classified information. "Reasonable person" should have known better.

— Mike Dorning (@MikeDorning) July 5, 2016

FBI Director Comey: It is possible hostile actors gained access to Clinton's email account.

— Mikaela Bufano (@MikaelaBufano) July 5, 2016

BREAKING: FBI Director Comey says "no reasonable prosecutor would bring" a criminal case against Clinton.

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) July 5, 2016

FBI director Comey: We are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case

— Felicia Schwartz (@felschwartz) July 5, 2016

So it was necessary, as referenced here, for there to be malfeasant intent, not just sloppiness or incompetence.  That's the part I got wrong; she didn't mean to, and that's okay.

I suppose there would have had to have been evidence that somebody died as a result of her mishandling of classified information.  But perhaps not even then.  Killing your own credibility and trustworthiness is no crime, after all.

Especially when it was already dead.

Update: It seems the law is quite clear about intent.

Scattershooting President Clinton's first hundred days

-- This, via here, only succeeds in making me nauseous.  They left out 'start a war on Iran' for openers.  At least she might accomplish what Obama has failed to do on Guantanamo.  But she'd negotiate away an unfettered right for a woman to choose if she is left to drink alone with the GOP at White House happy hours.  (Yes, her call to abolish Hyde is a very good move.)

-- No, she won't. Because she understands what would happen if she did.

Texas Republicans, of all groups, are perhaps the most enthused over the idea that the state could be in play in the fall.

Republicans say they would love to see Democrats drawn into what they view as a hopeless money pit. But also, within a state GOP torn over its own nominee, a Clinton offensive could be just what it takes to rally an otherwise morose group.

“The quickest way to activate disenfranchised GOP donors who won’t give to Trump would be an aggressive effort by Democrats to win the state,” said Brian Haley, a Texan who was a top fundraiser in two previous GOP presidential campaigns.

Abbott is one of multiple Republicans who have already sent fundraising emails on the notion.

“She has already made it known that winning Texas will be a focus of her campaign,” Abbott campaign director John Jackson wrote in a recent missive, referring to Clinton. “It’s clear that Hillary will not only continue Obama’s liberal leadership—she will be even worse!”

Stay out of Texas, #HRod.  Democrats here have it bad enough as it is, and they might make up a little bit of ground  (scroll down to Mark Jones' assessment at the end) if you could just, you know, keep using the state as an ATM like always.

-- Some people are really mad about white privilege, brute-force capitalism, and Independence Day.

Call it the land you love, but make sure the drones are loaded, the poisons shipped off in container ships potent, the pestilence of capitalism fully armed with the parasitic power of one global power, my country tis of thee.

I could hammer and hammer the prison industrial complex eating the American Black Male. I could rattle on and on about the United States of Debts, all the trillions homeowners “owe” the financial loan sharks, thugs, or the trillion plus students owe for virtually worthless degrees in this precarious, at-will, dead-end job America.

I could rattle on how insipid and violent forgetting is, and knowing just enough of the foundations of the lies of history to get a young and old person steaming. Imagine, the state of the world with Hollywood, Big Sports, Bubble-head Big Media, Vapid Mainstream Academia weighing in on the vast sucking sound that is America’s presidential-congressional-gubernatorial set of mistakes called elections (sic).

Bombs bursting in air, as I cruised down from a pretty cool spot in the mountains, supposedly away from the ghastly 7-11-Walmart-Texaco-McDonald’s dervish of hyper-stupidity, also called mainstreaming, mainlining consumerism.

I certainly think that any of the morons advocating for #Texit -- even Greg Abbott knows better, for fuck's sake -- should have been compelled to go into the office or the plant for the entire three-day weekend, but this is simply too much hyperbolic exaggeration (two "trillions" is two too many) and way too angry.  Right message but absolutely the wrong messenger.

Dude: drink more America this Labor Day, mkay?

-- None of the above, thanks, but absolutely not Ron Green.

"Battleground bloodbath"

Put down that hotdog and take a look at this.  Via Politico, Ballotpedia's most recent state polling shows Hillary beating Trump ...

• in Florida by 14 percentage points, 51-37
• in Iowa by 4, 45-41
• in Michigan by 17, 50-33
• in North Carolina by 10, 48-38
• in Ohio by 9, 46-37
• in Pennsylvania by 14, 49-35
• and in Virginia by 7, 45-38

Landslide territory -- which is to say that she has no place to go but down from here.  Look at all the states in which she registers 50% or nearly; that tells you they surveyed just two horses in the race.  Hilariously, Ballotpedia also polled John Kasich and Paul Ryan against Clinton, and did include Gary Johnson in a separate three-way (but not Jill Stein).  Here's how that more realistic view of the landscape appears:

• Clinton 47, Trump 34, Johnson 12, neither/refused 7, MOE +/- 4% in Florida
• Clinton 38, Trump 36, Johnson 16, neither/refused 9 in Iowa
• Clinton 47, Trump 30, Johnson 14, neither/refused 9 in Michigan
• Clinton 44, Trump 37, Johnson 10, neither/refused 10 in North Carolina
• Clinton 41, Trump 34, Johnson 15, neither/refused 10, MOE 3.9% in Ohio
• Clinton 46, Trump 32, Johnson 13, neither refused 9, MOE 4% in Pennsylvania
• Clinton 43, Trump 35, Johnson 11, neither/refused 11, MOE 3.9 in Virginia 

Update: If you feel like sanity-checking one state, look at RCP for the Tarheels.  Two late-June polls gave Hillary just a two-point lead there ... and one had Trump ahead by 2.

I've been reading some things that say Johnson pulls votes from Clinton in similar numbers as he does Trump, but Ballotpedia's results here suggest that's not enough to keep her from a very large Electoral College victory in November.  If you're one of those people who likes to parrot that "polls this early don't mean anything", then you might be a junior political consultant or a Trump voter.

As for surveying Kasich and Ryan as the GOP nominee, maybe Ballotpedia should just go ahead and do a Mitt Romney versus Joe Biden head-to-head, no third party candidates.   Because we wouldn't want reality to intrude in any way.

Update II: NPR's magic tool lets you  manipulate data like voter demographics and turnout to predict the winner.  Nutgraf:

"I will win New York against Hillary Clinton," Trump promised at a campaign stop this spring. It's a claim he's fond of reiterating, and since he has articulated a specific desire to win New York, we wanted to see what it would take for him to turn his home state red. Assuming all other demographic groups vote exactly as they did in 2012, and assuming turnout also remains constant, Trump would need to win 97 percent of white men in New York. 97 percent.

Here's your takeaway:

If Clinton somehow loses this election, it would qualify as the most stunning collapse in political history.  And that shame would be all on her.  No more Green excuses, Hillbots.  Look above at how the party and its nominee are still being ignored, after all.

The Weekly Fourth Wrangle

As the Texas Progressive Alliance brings you the Independence Day blog post roundup, we ask you to be cautious about your planned explosions today.

Off the Kuff credits Wendy Davis for getting it right on HB2.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos is hardly shocked to learn that our state is run by a group of misogynist swine. Will the Texas GOP Apologize for its Unconstitutional Anti-Abortion Bill and its Sexist Piggery?

Socratic Gadfly notes how chunks of the mainstream media tried to create Scalia-connected false drama on the Supreme Court's abortion ruling.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme warns Texans that a far right group wants to purge Starr County voter rolls so that you don't get a vote.

Neil at All People Have Value supports Ann Harris Bennett for Harris County Tax Assessor/Voter Registrar. She will do a very good job in that important office. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

The Lewisville Texan Journal reports on a community loan center as an alternative to the predatory auto title/payday lenders.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston translates Trump's Social Security plan.

Dos Centavos reviews the first Intocable album in three years.

Upon suggesting that Hillary Clinton modify some of her positions to attract Bernie Sanders supporters, Egberto Willies got the predictable response.

And Cheeto Jesus (Donald Trump) begged Saul Relative (PDiddie at Brains and Eggs) for a campaign donation.

==========================

More posts from other great Texas progressive blogs!

Better Texas Blog reminds us that the Zika virus is fast approaching and outlines some preventative measures.

Lawflog takes note of the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement's investigation into the head of the TABC and her husband.

Prairie Weather reads the NYT's review of George W. Bush's forthcoming biography as a scathing indictment.

Steve Bates at Yellow Doggerel Democrat marks today's holiday with a song from the soon-to-be-retired Paul Simon.

The Houston Press peeks behind the scenes at Houston's thirty-year-old Freedom Over Texas, the city's fireworks on the Fourth celebration.

Carol Morgan has a point of view regarding the rendezvous on the Phoenix airport tarmac.

Ashton Woods at Safety in Numbers says, "Pride Houston, we have a problem".

Andrea Ferrigno celebrates the SCOTUS decision striking down HB2.

Keep Austin Wonky criticizes that city's road bond proposal.

The TSTA Blog takes exception to Texas exceptionalism.

The Makeshift Academic explains why Medicaid expansion was such a key component of the Affordable Care Act.

Drew Blackburn wonders why Austin is having such a hard time with regulations on sharing economy companies.

Paradise in Hell looks at the sinkholes of West Texas.

idiotprogrammer tells a tall tale about zombies.

Sunday Independence Funnies

With all apologies to Reg Smythe...

Clinton email investigation in its last throes

After 3.5 hours answering questions posed by FBI investigators, Hillary Clinton has just about finished skating over the thin ice.

Given what we know now, an indictment doesn’t seem likely. As Vox’s Dylan Matthews noted, prosecutors would need evidence not just that Clinton sent classified information outside secure government networks, but that she did so knowing that it was supposed to be classified.

Clinton has denied this, insisting any classified material in the emails was either classified after the fact or she did not realize it had been classified — a position she likely reiterated today to the FBI.

This would contradict my 'murder/manslaughter' post, and doesn't really explain exactly why she'd be in the clear if some of those emails were "born classified".  But hey, they're probably lawyers and know more than I do.

Despite the right wing media's obsession with false accounts regarding the Clinton email server, most credible accounts state the chances of the former Secretary of State facing any legal action or an indictment are miniscule.

Others are saying the same thing.  With the Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton chat on the Phoenix tarmac earlier this past week, the matter got unnecessarily murkier.  One person has the power to clear it all up.

FBI Director James Comey is now firmly in the driver’s seat of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, after Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged she would accept whatever course of action his bureau and career prosecutors recommend.

[...]

“Comey is the center of gravity on this thing,” said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director and president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.

“There is a growing expectation that we the public need to hear the FBI, Jim Comey version of whether or not charges will be brought,” he added. “There has probably been increasing recognition by her that that’s true, that she is viewed as — regardless of her prior reputation as an effective prosecutor — she’s now the head of Obama’s DOJ, a political position in a Democratic administration that is deciding on the prosecution or not of the leading Democratic candidate.”

[...]

The decision (by Lynch to accept the recommendations of investigators) puts the spotlight squarely on Comey, a Republican who is widely respected by GOP lawmakers and known for a streak of independence.

“He is a pro’s pro,” said Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney and head of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a watchdog group. “And I think this takes the pressure off of him that whatever the FBI recommends will be followed, where before I am certain he would be concerned that there will be political interference from the attorney general.”

There’s still a chance that FBI investigators and Justice Department lawyers, who are working on the case together, arrive at different conclusions on how to proceed.

The FBI has a tendency to be more aggressive with cases, whereas prosecutors might be more reluctant to push a charge they are not absolutely certain will stick — especially if the next presidency might be at stake.

“I could easily envision a scenario in which the FBI concludes there is enough evidence to make a case, but the DOJ prosecutors decide that the case is too weak to risk the legal precedent,” Bradley Moss, a lawyer who handles national security and secrecy issues, wrote in an email to The Hill.

“The DOJ career prosecutors are truly the ones who are under the microscope at this point.”

In the federal case against former CIA Director David Petraeus last year, FBI officials reportedly pushed for him to be indicted on felony charges, but then-Attorney General Eric Holder downgraded them to misdemeanors.

Yet Comey is no shrinking violet. If he is ultimately overruled by officials within the Justice Department, that is unlikely to remain a secret.

Potentially incriminating news has “a way of getting out,” said Whitaker.

“I would imagine ultimately we will know how the investigation was conducted or whether there was interference from the political folks at the Department of Justice,” he added.

“But I don’t know whether it will be in time to have an impact in an election year.”

She's almost out of the briar patch.

Green is the New Blue Funnies

The old Blue is just too Red for me.  (And don't call it purple, please.)

This one's for my pal, Erik Vidor...

Starring Loretta Lynch as Pontius Pilate

So she and Bill Clinton talked about more than just grandchildren the other day at the airport.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch plans to announce on Friday that she will accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director make about whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, a Justice Department official said. Her decision removes the possibility that a political appointee will overrule investigators in the case.

The Justice Department had been moving toward such an arrangement for months — officials said in April that it was being considered — but a private meeting between Ms. Lynch and former President Bill Clinton this week set off a political furor and made the decision all but inevitable.

Republicans said the meeting, which took place at the Phoenix airport, had compromised the independence of the investigation as the F.B.I. was winding it down. Some called for Ms. Lynch to recuse herself, but she did not take herself off the case — one that could influence a presidential election.

Ms. Lynch plans to discuss the matter at a conference in Aspen, Colo., on Friday. The Justice Department declined to comment. The official who confirmed the discussion did so on the condition of anonymity because the internal decision-making process is normally kept confidential.

Washing her hands of the matter is... well, maaybe it's telling.  We'll see how the presser later today goes.  Back here I posted and linked to the fact that investigators on the cases of Sandy Berger and David Petreaus were something akin to pissed over the slaps on the wrist both of those men got for mishandling classified information.

Maybe the water just got hotter.  Hard to tell.  Clinton's fate ultimately rests in the hands of a federal grand jury whose names, political affiliations, etc. we'll never know.  She's still got some bumpy roads to travel over, which is undoubtedly the reason why Bernie Sanders has not suspended his campaign.  If I were a Hillbot, I suppose I'd be nervous and irritable too.

Astrodome parking

I hate to say I told you so (not really) but I told you so.

Harris County commissioners on Tuesday were presented with a $105 million plan to add two levels of parking to the Astrodome to prepare it for future use.

The plan would raise the ground level of the dome two floors and convert those two floors into 1,400 parking spaces, paving the way for the new ground level to be used for events or for an indoor park.

I missed it by about 150 parking spaces, so there's that.  Start the annual revenue estimate with 1400 spaces x $75 per x 10 home NFL games, 20 or so Rodeo concert/barbecue cookoff nights, and whatever number you like for NCAA March Madness weekends, soccer games such as the Copa America tournament going on this month, the OTC, and single-day events (Beyonce' concerts, Free Press Summer Fest, and so on like that) that are capable of consuming most of the parking capacity.  People are already complaining about no air conditioning in the garage, but the selling point is having your car in the shade instead of in the sun.  My calculator grinds out a conservative -- using '10' as the third multiplier -- $4.2 million.  If you think $75 is too much to park -- that's how much Jerry Jones gets for close-in spaces at AT&T Stadium on Cowboys game days -- then cut it by a third to $50 and it's still a tidy $2.8 mil a year.

The fate of the above-ground part of the Dome is still to be determined.  Judge Emmett is stuck on a convention hall, but a park really seems like its most likely fate to me.  It's all about who pays, as always, and the taxpayer isn't going to be paying anything no matter what.

The takeaway here is that I might know what I'm blogging about.  Most of the time.

Replacing Rodney Ellis in the state Senate

Kuff's on it, so is the Chron.  The contestants -- Borris Miles, Senfronia ("Mr. Tesla") Thompson, Ron Green and maybe Garnet Coleman and CO Bradford -- square off for preening before the SD-13 precinct chairs (my precinct chair gets a ballot) and early predictions are limited to 1) the vote will be closer than it was for county commissioner, and 2) we'll probably have a statehouse seat to do this all over again with.

Tonight's county executive meeting (all Harris D precinct chairs) to select a couple of vacant judicial bench nominees is prelude to the exclusive 94 who will select the person to replace Rodney Ellis in the Texas Senate.  In three weeks.

Update (7/1): the above sentence has been edited to explain the purpose of last night's meeting.

"Many of the candidates have complex political histories that could result in a high level of discord," Texas Southern University political scientist Michael Adams said. "I don't think these people are going to be playing nice."

Fun.  Appallingly, Mark Jones is correct again.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones lamented what he described as a "less than democratic and less than transparent process."

"It's an unfortunate artifact of Texas election law that state legislators should look into next session," Jones said. "We have a special election process in place for officeholders who die or resign while in office. It would not be a bad idea to consider a similar method for parties to replace nominees."

Jones is not just acting like the Republican he is here.  Oligarchy is indeed a lousy way to run a democracy, and if any local Democrat also says so publicly, point me to it.  It's the kind of sorry crap they'd be the first ones to criticize the Harris County GOP over.  NOW you do understand why people say both parties are alike?

Update (7/2):  Chuck -- with no apparent clue that there might be something wrong with the process -- has the Chron's news that the 'special' election lost its two 'maybe' combatants, Coleman and Bradford, and is set for two Saturday mornings hence, July 16.

Cheeto Jesus begs me for money

Previously I indicated my experience as a Republican donor named Saul Relative, so these random fundraising letters always give me a good laugh.

Sorry about you having to read it sideways; click to enlarge.  Four pages, two front and back.  Big D didn't get the memo from the Seventies about using just the one page.  Oh well, his support network is surely intelligent enough to act on it, even if they can't read it.

I'll watch for a news account -- or a post from some blogger who spends lots of time compiling campaign finance reports -- mentioning the money haul in a few weeks, see how the shill is going.  My guess is it'll be good.  Meanwhile note that he's doing it wrong, in an illegal kinda way.

As the scrutiny on the Orange-utan comes into tighter focus, we learn that Drumpf really isn't smarter than a fifth-grader.  Also that his rallies tend to leave behind large tabs that municipal taxpayers have to foot.

(T)he city of Costa Mesa, California, spent $30,000 on security for an April Trump rally at which violent protests resulted in several arrests and damaged police cars. The city asked the Trump campaign to pay $15,000, but the campaign has not offered to help and they are not obligated to do so, according to Bloomberg News.

"It’s a venue where politicians typically come, and it’s literally never been an issue, Costa Mesa city spokesman Tony Dodero told Bloomberg.

Law enforcement officials told Bloomberg News that the Trump campaign's tendency to sell more tickets than there are seats available results in large crowds outside of venues, sometimes ending in clashes with protesters.

Matt Rokus, the deputy police chief in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, said that for a rally in the city, the Trump campaign sold 6,000 tickets for a venue that seats 1,800.

"Duh, there’s going to be a problem," Rokus told Bloomberg News. "You got a bunch of people who drove hours to get there thinking they had a seat."

That explains some of the extra anger, anyway.  This isn't going to be your father's Republican election cycle.  It's not even going to be a GOP scampaign that you'll be able to recognize from the more recent ones.  Another 'no-precedent' occurrence in a long line of 'em, and more certainly to look out for.  Fun!