Alameel taking someone's bad advice

David Alameel might be rich but he isn't very intelligent.  He got spanked when he asked for his money back from John Cornyn, and he loses the spin game here again.

A nationally known celebrity lawyer for U.S. Senate hopeful David Alameel is threatening to sue the campaign of Texas Republican John Cornyn, alleging that the U.S. Senate's No. 2 GOP lawmaker defamed the Democratic nominee by repeating "specious allegations" made in a decade-old sexual harassment case.

An attorney for Cornyn fired back in a letter this week, accusing Alameel of trying to "intimidate Texans from discussing his fitness for public office."

You're just playing into their hands here, Dr. Alameel.

In a letter demanding a retraction, Los Angeles attorney Martin Singer accused Cornyn's campaign of making "outrageous, false and defamatory" statements about the case, which was brought by four women who said they lost their jobs after complaining about sexual harassment by a supervisor in Alameel's dental clinics.

In a sign that Alameel can mount a well-funded challenge to the heavily favored Republican, the wealthy Dallas dental mogul has employed the high-profile lawyer that the New York Times once called a "guard dog to the stars" -- a reference to clients such as Charlie Sheen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Quentin Tarantino, Sylvester Stallone, as well as Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

I could excerpt more from the other side of the paywall, but it's going to be a long, hot summer and I sadly feel certain that Alameel is going to make even bigger mistakes than this, so I'll hold my fire for now.  Don't want to be an outcast at the TDP convention in a month.  Nobody's going to be inviting Dan McClung to any parties in Dallas, that's for sure.

Given the sensitivities involved, some analysts question why Alameel has chosen to breathe new life into the story by threatening a libel suit, particularly given the high legal threshold public figures must meet to prove slander.

"I can make no sense whatsoever of Alameel's attempt at smearing his opponent for using (court) filed sexual harassment-related information -- whatever their outcome," said veteran Texas Democratic strategist Daniel McClung. "There is not a chance in hell that subject would not be revisited in a U.S. Senate campaign, and using one's own resources to assure it remains in the public eye is not what I would consider a wise political tactic."

The re-airing of the women's 2003 lawsuit also comes at a delicate time for the Texas Democratic Party, which has staked its comeback hopes on mobilizing women and minorities. Alameel will be on the same Democratic ticket in November as gubernatorial hopeful Wendy Davis, who endorsed him in the primary against Rogers.

Still waiting for a Lone Star Project/Matt Angle e-mail explaining this to me.

Texas Democrats really struck out on their US Senate choices this year.  But don't blame me; I voted for Maxey Scherr.

Some more thoughts on political courage

After my short rant added to the bottom of last evening's post about who has stones on Houston's city council and who doesn't (not surprisingly, the ones that don't are mostly men and mostly white, but the one thing they all have in common is 'conservative'), I thought it valuable to connect that observation with the state of play in Texas five months away from our statewide elections.

Doing the right thing is, as bluntly as it needs to be said, what conservative Republicans just don't understand about governing.  There is no 'my way or the highway' attitude that produces good governance.  From Ted Cruz to Dan Patrick and at every bus stop on their route, Texas stands again at a precipice.   We're conducting the nation's most dangerous political experiment, and it's about to blow up the laboratory.

The real problem, as we know, is that the 95% of Texans who couldn't be bothered to participate in selecting the state's leaders in 2014 are going to suffer the worst effects of the explosion and meltdown.  They don't seem to care though, so why should we?

Because it is critical that someone care, that's why.  If all around you there are men making comfortable livings from carbon extraction who deny the effects of their work on the planet's climate, it takes courage to stand up and say, "we need to stop doing that".  And work toward alternatives.

This is why there remains significant activist opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, even though tar sands oil is already being refined now in Houston and Port Arthur (because the oil was shipped by rail from Alberta to Cushing, and is now flowing through the southern leg of the pipeline to the refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast).  Even though transporting tar sands oil by pipeline is probably safer than shipping it by rail.  The part that the majority of the polled public doesn't understand is that no matter how many jobs KXL creates, it's not worth it.  There are no jobs on a dead planet.

You cannot whine about the federal debt's deleterious effects on the lives of your children and grandchildren and simultaneously deny global warming.  That is moronic.

If the Earth's 'Goldilocks zone' only has a few hundred years left, if we have passed the tipping point for halting the collapse of the Arctic ice shelf and the corresponding rise in sea levels and monster hurricanes and tornados and drought, then the easiest out would be to say, 'it's gonna happen anyway, I'll just pray for God's help and make as much money as I can as we go down the tubes".  There is nothing strong, or bold, or courageous about that option.

It takes actual courage to for someone to sign a petition banning fracking in their community when their neighbors are all cashing out (and moving out).  It takes political fortitude to vote your conscience over your political longevity, and most certainly over your bank account.

As we continue to learn, however, conservatives have mostly squashed their consciences.  "We oppose Medicaid expansion on principle even though millions of people will die because of it."  "Round 'em all up and send 'em back because they're moochers and freeloaders".   (Notice I left out the racist parts.)

This is the opposite of courage, as nearly everybody understands.  In fact it's just garden variety fear and xenophobia, stimulated by ignorance, amplified by its own arrogance.  And as we already know, fear is one of the primary voters of human behavior.

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, as some wise whatever-he-was once said.  That's where Texas is, and where it digs itself deeper.  Unless some relatively small number of Texans who care enough can find the will and the courage to change it.