Thursday, October 15, 2015

No Super Bowl for you, Bob

Go stand in the corner next to Lance Bigot Berkman.

Houston Texans owner Bob McNair donated $10,000 this week to opponents of the city's embattled equal rights ordinance, entering the political fray over the law headed to voters in November.

McNair, a frequent GOP donor, mailed the  $10,000 check to opponents  earlier this week, according to Campaign for Houston spokesman Jared Woodfill. He said the donation "was very exciting for us."

You get some free tickets or something, Jared?  Team's kinda crappy this season, there's going to be lots of 'em given away before Xhristmas.

Critics of the law, largely Christian conservatives, object to the non-discrimination protections it extends to gay and transgender residents — the law also lists 13 other protected groups.  Supporters of the ordinance, including Mayor Annise Parker, have warned that repealing the law could damage the city's economy and could jeopardize high-profile events such as Houston's 2017 Super Bowl.

Woodfill pushed back on that notion Wednesday.

"The HERO supporters have tried to scare people into believing that we would lose the Super Bowl," Woodfill said. "Obviously, if there were any truth behind that, Bob McNair wouldn't' be donating to the folks that are opposed to the ordinance."

That would be me that Brylcreem Woodfill is calling out.  Doug Miller at KHOU reported on my petition to move the Super Bowl out of Houston when it began, and Greg Groogan at Fox was first on this McNair story and his coverage of the ordinance developments -- from the slimy anti-'s teevee ad to Mayor Parker's ill-advised Twitter feud with Puma Berkman -- has been exhaustive.

Despite the furious eruptions of hate spewing like so many lava flows in Hawaii, the HERO is leading in the polls and the tourists will still be coming to H-Town for the Super Bowl.

Richard Carlbom, campaign manager for supporters of the law, released a statement saying the "vast majority of Houston business interests taking a position on Proposition 1 support it."'

"They know discrimination is bad for business and bad for the city's image. Over time, companies, including sporting franchises, will stop wanting to come here."

Bob McNair has earned a little pro-tolerance economic boycott, and I hope the folks who spent all that time on a Beyonce' hashtag get one organized in time for the next home game.

Update: "Seeing that McNair has a long history of investing in losing causes -- his football team, the GOP -- this brightens prospects for HERO's passage."  -- found elsewhere online

Update II:  More on McNair's shitty conservative politics from Texas Monthly.

Would you be willing to hand over absurd amounts of money to a person whose politics you oppose? What about if you knew that a large amount of said cash would end up in the pockets of politicians? Okay, let’s put it this way: Would you be willing to spend massive amounts of money on season tickets, $12 beers, and parking fees at the playhouse of a team who uses his clout and bank account to influence politicians?

[...]

This year, McNair has scratched out $500,000 checks to no fewer than four Republican presidential campaigns: Cruz, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, and Jeb Bush. With one of those campaigns already DOA, another consigned to the kids’ table debates, and the other two polling anemically, you could say McNair gives millions to losers off of the field and on. Last year, he gave equal amounts to no fewer than seven GOP senate candidates in seven different states. So, all told, that’s $6 million to GOP candidates across the country since the beginning of last year, and add in another $450,000 to the Greg Abbott campaign. Hey, he’s sold a lot of JJ Watt jerseys the last year or so.

Between 2009 and October 2011, McNair donated $215,200 to Republican candidates, but not a penny to a single Democrat. And in the waning months of the 2012 election cycle, evidently alarmed at the prospect of a second term for Obama, McNair went full Battle Red, shoveling millions into the Romney campaign.

Back in the 2004 election cycle, McNair gave $500,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign, thus helping to portray Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, as a coward. [...]

Yeah, McNair supports the free-enterprise system right up to the point where he doesn’t. Like when he needs a stadium for his football team, for example. Nearly half of NRG Stadium’s $474 million price tag—$289 million—was publicly funded. But in McNair’s mind, at least, it’s primarily the out of towners footing the bill. He told ESPN:

That’s how we sold the project in Houston, it was sort of user pay. The hotel occupancy tax, well football draws a lot of people in. The rental car tax, people from out of town come in, they rent cars. It’s not property taxes that were supporting it.

And there’s another thing that McNair and Republicans share. If there’s one thing Bob McNair hates, it’s taxes (unless they’re yours, and they’re helping him build his stadium). McNair is a co-founder of Americans for Fair Taxation, which advocates for abolishing the IRS and replacing the federal income tax with a 23 percent sales tax on retail goods and services.

Enough of this "business".  Even Republican Texans fans should be able to figure out they're getting "the business" by a con man.  This greedy capitalist pig needs a boycott like yesterday.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

The reviews are in *updates*

Clinton won with force, grace, and a little charm; Sanders was good in some spots (her email)  and not so much in others (guns), O'Malley had a good closing statement, Chafee -- a Vanderbilt heir -- questioned socialism, and Webb is by far the best Republican in the race.  By far.


Prediction: if Clinton can hold her own against the rapidly crumbling Benghazi witch-hunters later this month, Joe Biden will not enter the race.

More from the NYT.

Bloggers, commentators and the Twitterati quickly weighed in on the first Democratic debate, scoring the winners and losers. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the clear victor, according to the opinion shapers in the political world (even conservative commentators).

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont won some points for his integrity, while the others — Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland; Jim Webb, the former senator from Virginia and secretary of the Navy; and Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor and senator — were mostly viewed as having missed their chance.

Some suggested that another loser was the man still deciding on whether to run, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., as Mrs. Clinton appeared to be formidable. Others disagreed.

I really don't have anything to add.  The Republican responses, from Donald Trump to Mike Huckabee, were completely unhinged, somewhat more so than even I expected.  Their minions on Twitter likewise.   (Facebook is useless to me in this endeavor.)

AP fact-checked the debaters and found them lacking.  Just before the "festivities", as Wolf Blitzer called them, ABC/WaPo's poll found her solid among blue partisans and him (Sanders, the only guy worth mentioning from here on to 2016) growing among independents.  I think all of those constituencies strengthened after last night.

If you did not watch it -- or even if you did, uninterrupted by your party's guests yelling and cheering, or your social media timelines spinning like a penny slot machine -- this is the best reviewUpdate: Oh, and No More Mister Nice Blog, pretty much an echo of my thinking.

I'll have more later, tied into Clinton's Texas swing this week (she's in San Antonio tomorrow with her presumptive running mate).

Updates:  In the meantime...

-- From Vox: The revealing way the candidates spoke about Syria.  This excerpt:

(Her debate response) is consistent with Clinton's long-held interventionist approach to the world, which is generally more aggressive than what most Democratic voters are comfortable with.

You'd think that her chief rival, Bernie Sanders, would pounce on this. Yet Sanders didn't say much about her policy. His most direct hit was more tepid: "She is talking about, as I understand it, a no-fly zone in Syria, which I think is a very dangerous situation. Could lead to real problems."

On foreign policy, Sanders actually isn't that far to Clinton's left, and he is more in line with Obama. "I support air strikes in Syria and what the president is trying to do," he said during the debate. Indeed, if you look at his more extensive debate comments Syria policy answer, he basically called for what Obama is already doing...

-- Six takeaways from CNN

-- Highlights and analysis above the live-blogging from the NYT and The Atlantic.