Transitions

-- After ten years at Burnt Orange Report, Karl-Thomas Musselman moves on to whatever's next.  Godspeed to a great blogger and even better progressive.

-- Eye on Williamson has suffered some server issues in recent weeks and has temporarily relocated to here.  Here's their latest, contradicting TIME's recent article: Why Texas doesn't have to be our future.

-- Rest in peace, Bum Phillips.  As some of you know, I grew up in the Golden Triangle, attended Lamar, and my dad worked in the same old Magnolia/Mobil/ExxonMobil refinery in Beaumont that Bum did (so did I, for one summer).  Bum's legacy in the southeastern-most corner of Texas is even bigger there than it is here in Houston.  And it is inextricably linked with the Astrodome's.

Twice Phillips’ Oilers battled the Pittsburgh Steelers for a berth in the Super Bowl, and both times they came up short. After each loss, they were welcomed home by more than 40,000 cheering fans at the Astrodome, inspiring one of the most famous quotations in the history of Texas sports.

“One year ago we knocked on the door. This year we beat on the door,” Phillips said after the 1980 title-game loss. “Next year we’re gonna kick the sumbitch in.”

[...]

Of the first of the two mammoth Dome pep rallies, Phillips said, “Don’t forget all those people standing along the road when we were driving in. There must have been a hundred thousand of them out there. And we’d lost the damned game. I’ll take that memory to my grave.”

Have I mentioned that I am voting to save the Astrodome?

-- Speaking of voting, here's a good site, compliments of ProgressTexas, that will help you make sure you have everything squared away in order to cast your ballot, beginning Monday morning at a location near you.

Sam Houston for Texas Attorney General

Matt Angle telegraphed it last week, and the Texas Democrat who earned the most votes statewide in 2008 confirmed it yesterday.  Careful parsing by the folks at First Reading reveals the distinction in the assertion.

This is very artfully done. When I first read this I assumed it meant that Houston ran ahead of President Obama in Texas. In fact, he did get a slightly higher percentage of the vote - 45.88 percent to 43.68 for Obama. But his vote total - 3,525,141, lagged ever-so-slightly behind Obama's 3,528,633. But Angle's statement is perfectly accurate because Houston did win more votes than any other "Texas Democratic candidate," because neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden is a Texan.

Houston is light years ahead of the three stooges in the GOP primary scrambling to replace Wheelchair Coathanger Ken.  This blog has already pulled the curtain away from Barry Smitherman many times, and yesterday Dan "Curly" Branch stepped up to make his case.

State Rep. Dan Branch announced Thursday his proposal to create a Voter Fraud Task Force if elected as Attorney General.

“I have a clear plan to attack voter fraud in Texas,” Branch, R-Dallas, said in a press release.

Branch said the task force would:

•  ”closely monitor the activities of groups that would seek to subvert ballot integrity

•  appoint a Special Counsel devoted to exposing and prosecuting any instance of voter fraud, and

•  aggressively defend the landmark Texas voter ID law from the Obama Administration’s spurious attempt to invalidate it.”

Well, he has been getting out-kooked, after all.  At least Don Quixote could find a windmill to tilt.

It's now Ken Paxton's turn to do or say something ridiculously ignorant.  We shouldn't have to wait very long.