Sunday Auld Lang Syne Funnies

Here are the lyrics, so you don't have to mumble through them.

Brains and Eggs' Texan of the Year is ...

Harvey, naturally.

Within a mile from my house -- which stayed high and dry -- people were being rescued from flooded cars on I-610 by raft and by helicopter.

Harvey by the numbers (as of Sept. 1, four months ago):

More than 20 trillion gallons: That's the total amount of rain that fell across Texas and Louisiana, a staggering deluge that represents enough water to supply New York City's needs for over five decades.

51.88 inches: The amount of rain recorded at Cedar Bayou on the outskirts of Houston in just under five days, marking a new record for the heaviest rainfall for a storm in the continental U.S., according to the National Weather Service.

$125 billion: (Texas Gov.) Greg Abbott said his state will need federal relief money "far in excess" of that total. Moody’s Analytics has estimated $97 billion in destruction alone and some $108 billion in total damages, counting lost output.  More recent estimates put the tally close to $200 billion.

There are ongoing quarrels about the relief funds raised and how, and if, they are being spent.  

Ninety people in the US died as a result of Harvey.  Over 185,000 homes were damaged, and more than 364,000 people filed for FEMA relief.  A number well in excess of 42,000 went to shelters.  Ten thousand were rescued just by federal forces, among them 24,000 National Guardsmen.  At least 300,000 lost power for some period of time, and there were some 120,000 people in Beaumont who had to go without clean water for several days, as the public water facility there flooded.

Ten petrochemical refineries in the region were shut down for days, accounting for 3 million daily barrels -- nearly 17% -- of the nation's refining capacity.  The most infamous was the Arkema plant in Crosby, near Baytown, which had volatile chemicals that exploded and burned when the plant lost power due to flooding.  The facility had no contingency plan for an emergency of this nature due to relaxed enforcement of environmental regulations by Trump's EPA.

My wife and I were not personally affected by Harvey's wrath.  We were among the lucky ones.  My mother was forced to evacuate, twice, the second time by jet ski, and finally made it to Houston several days after the worst of Harvey moved east to torment others.  My childhood home, her home of 57 years, was inundated by 21 inches of water.  She lost everything: home, auto, clothing, valuables, keepsakes and mementos.  She is now safely ensconced in one of the finest assisted-living facilities in the city, the Village of River Oaks, but not without having endured the physical and emotional stress of so much upheaval and loss.  On Christmas Day my wife drove her around to see the Mecom Fountain and Hermann Park and other parts of town between where she is and where we are.  She remarked, "I finally feel like a Houstonian."

As for those who were less fortunate, it will be years -- decades perhaps -- for the Texas Gulf Coast, from Rockport to Orange, to recover from this year's 500-year flood event (Houston's third in three years).  Then again, Harvey is now being called a 1000-year event. 

What about next year's?  Or the year after?

I certainly hope I don't have to award any more TOYs to environmental catastrophes.

Unwrapping the Final Wrangle of 2017

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes you and yours a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and all other appropriate greetings of the season.  Here comes the last blog post and lefty news roundup of the year!

SocraticGadfly took a look at various regional election filings by both D's and R's in Northeast Texas and in the Metroplex, while wondering when and how Joe Straus is going to stay active in GOP politics.

Dos Centavos lists the members of the #DeportationCaucus, the Democrats in the House and Senate who voted 'no' on a continuing resolution which would have provided relief for DREAMers.

The Lewisville Texan Journal has the listing of candidates that are on the ballot for the March 2016 primary in that city (and Denton County).

Off the Kuff looked at Democratic filings for state Senate and for races in counties neighboring Harris County.

jobsanger apparently wants Joe Biden to run for president in 2020.

Texas Leftist blogged about holiday stress extending all the way out to the store parking lot.

And Neil at All People Have Value wrote about a great work of public art in Houston called Hubcap in Grass. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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It's that listicle time of year again: 'best of', 'worst of', and plaudits honorable and not-so-much.

Texas Monthly's highly-anticipated Bum Steer Awards placed "glorified bathroom attendant" Dan Patrick at the top of their list this year.  Other Bums of distinction were "the entire" Texas Democratic Party, "Prison Warden" Bob McNair, and "fake news faker" Alex Jones.  (Sid Miller, Matt Rinaldi, Briscoe Cain, Joe Barton, Blake Farenthold, Jerry Jones, Ezekiel Elliott, Yuli Gurriel, Rick Perry, and Ted Cruz did not avoid dishonorable mention.  Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton somehow did.)

The Texas Observer's best feature stories, their choices for the ten best Texas books, and the seven most pressing issues facing rural Texas are spotlighted.

The Texas Tribune summarized their 2017 political coverage, from the bathroom bill to the wave of Lege members retiring.

More than two hundred events are scheduled in conjunction with the 2018 DreamWeek Summit in San Antonio next month, and the Current has a rundown.

The Urban Edge focuses on CHIP's uncertain future, and its impact on Houston and the state.

In the latest post-Harvey developments, the Texas Standard and the Houston Chronicle's Lise Olsen connected the dots between Houston's 'flood czar', Stephen Costello, and the real estate developers who sold homes built in the flood pools of west Houston ... without disclosing that information to buyers.

"I certainly was surprised when (Costello) told me that he had never calculated what engineers call ‘the maximum flood pool’ for the Barker and Addicks reservoir. And he said he had no idea that the subdivision his firm had built was inside that area,” Olsen says. “And curiously, he didn’t remember that his own firm had also done a very comprehensive study of the potential dangers of the reservoir flood pools to homes and calculated, in fact, that more than 5,000 homes were inside the flood pools back in 2000. He said he didn’t remember that in the interview I had with him.”

And Cory Garcia at the Houston Press hoped Santa Claus was able to find everybody who got scattered after Hurricane Harvey washed them out of their homes.

Happy Holidays Toons

Sunday 'T'was the Night Before' Funnies

"Happy Holidays" toons coming tomorrow.

Everybody Hates Jill

Not everybody, but a whole bunch of Jackasses who still need a dog to kick 13 months after their shitty presidential candidate snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Honestly, just when I was feeling good about where Democrats (certain Democrats, anyway) were headed ... they had to fuck that up with a fresh round of Jill Stein/Green Party hate.  The New McCarthyism is starting to suck harder.

David has already gone there, and Gadfly has followed suit.  I'll just say that there are suddenly a lot more Donkeys I won't be voting for as a result of this week's pile-on.  Shame all those blue-dick dogs can no longer say their she-ro isn't being investigated as of this morning.

Cover your ears before the braying about "witch hunt" drowns everything out.

The Weekly 'Week Before' Wrangle

With this week's Texas Progressive Alliance blog post and news roundup, it appears that the War on Christmas is on again ... and Christmas is losing.  Or perhaps it's just evangelical Christians, burned by Roy Moore and Donald Trump, who are the losers.  Wait ... no, it's Christmas.

In that vein, Zachery Taylor blogs that evangelical belief in the Apocalypse is influencing domestic and foreign policy.  We all lose if our leaders want to bring on Armageddon.

In lighter political reading, Off the Kuff looks at the statewide and Harris County Democratic primary filings, and SocraticGadfly takes a look at the candidate filings and the backstory for the Texas Green Party.

Doug Jones' victory over Roy Moore was made possible by the surge of African American voters in Alabama, a trend Democrats in Texas and across the country would be wise to duplicate, blogs PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

After a shocking Democratic victory in Alabama, Texas Leftist is also left to wonder if something similar could happen for the Lone Star State. What lessons, if any, can be learned by the Jones campaign, and could they apply to Texas?  Here's Part 1 of that question, with some surprising observations.

DBC Green Blog also had some thoughts about the Alabama special election. 

Dos Centavos noticed that Democrats nationally appeared to be folding like a cheap card table on supporting DREAMers, a critical miscalculation if the party wants Latin@ turnout to surge in 2018.

Rick Hasen's Election Law Blog reports that the private plaintiffs -- but not the US DOJ -- in the voter ID lawsuit before the 5th Circuit asked those justices to immediately lift their stay of the lower court order blocking the (revised) law's implementation.

Texas Vox covered one of the many conferences talking about the future of the Lone Star State post-Harvey.  Planet Texas 2050 (part of UT's Environmental Science Institute's 'Hot Science, Cool Talks' series) focused on the environmental stress associated with climate change, a rapidly growing state population, and the effects on our health, economy ... and even the supply of barbecue.

It's Big Spring versus Big Oil as the frackers go after the scarcest of resources in West Texas (their water), and Christopher Collins of the Texas Observer is is ringside.

And in his every-day posting of goofy polling news, Ted at jobsanger says that 59% of Americans think Santa Claus is a Democrat.  (Not sure what this says about a fictitious old white man with a long white beard, or Americans polled, or even Democrats.  Maybe it's all just a joke.)

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Elsewhere in Deep In the Hearta ...

In his aggregation of criminal justice news, Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast mentions the lack of oversight of 'forensic hypnosis', updates to the appalling report that a TDCJ teacher was raped by an inmate due to chronic understaffing, life sentences without plea bargaining, executing people who didn't actually commit murder (the law of parties doctrine), and more.

Better Texas Blog reminds you that if you were affected by Hurricane Harvey, your deadline to enroll in an Obamacare insurance plan is December 31.

Nonsequiteuse warns of Republican dirty tricks in HD-134, while Houston Justice profiled Richard Bonton, the primary challenger to longtime 5th Ward state representative Harold Dutton.  In SD-10 (Fort Worth area), PoliTex hears the war of words flaring up between the Republican incumbent Konni Burton, the Wendy Davis-endorsed Democratic conservative challenger Beverly Powell, and the progressive Democrat, Allison Campolo.

The Austin American Statesman has news of the Texas GOP filing suit to remove disgraced Cong. Blake Farenthold from the March primary ballot.

A seminar at the Day for Night festival in Houston on art and activism pulled no punches, as Texas Monthly's Michael Hardy listened to Chelsea Manning and Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova talk Trump, Putin, and the Resistance.  More on two of Day for Night's lesser-known musical acts from CultureMap Houston.  Meanwhile, the San Antonio Current gives you the heavy metal Christmas playlist you've been waiting for.

Houstonia spotlighted a northeast Houston institution, Current Cuts, celebrating their 30th anniversary over the weekend.

And Harry Hamid wrote about Liminal House.

T'was the Week Before Funnies

Horse Twitter drags Roy Moore

Jones edges Moore in Alabama

It was a cliffhanger.  What allowed the Democrats to hold onto some hope was the New York Times' predictive speedometer, or needle, which consistently showed Jones prevailing even as Roy Moore held a lead of 30,000+ votes and more than 5% with two-thirds of the returns in.  Usually a race is long-called by then.  But the urban areas -- or what passes for them in the Cotton State; Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, Selma, Tuscaloosa -- were counting more slowly, and Jones was overperforming in Trump country.

Voters in Alabama’s cities and most affluent suburbs overwhelmingly rejected Moore’s candidacy, an ominous sign for Republicans on the ballot next year in upscale districts. In Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham and some of the state’s wealthiest enclaves, Jones [...] captured more than 68 percent of the vote. And in Madison County, home to Huntsville and a large NASA facility, Mr. Jones won 57 percent of the vote.

While these Alabamians, many of them women, may have been appalled by the claims of sexual misconduct against Moore, results like these were not isolated to this race. They mirrored returns in last month’s statewide and legislative races in Virginia, a state filled with well-heeled suburbanites.

These highly educated and high-income voters, while often open to supporting Republicans, are uneasy with the hard-edged politics of President Trump and part of the reason his approval ratings are so dismal. If Republican candidates facing well-off voters next year do not find a way to separate themselves from the president, they will face a punishing midterm election next year.

I reject the premise that suburban (aka white) women rescued the Democrat.

Democrats struggled for years under President Barack Obama to turn out African-American voters in off-year elections. For Jones, robust black turnout was essential to victory. He poured resources into African-American outreach and even summoned political leaders from out of state, including Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor, to help in the race’s final days.

Black voters turned out in force, handing Jones a decisive lead in Alabama’s cities and predominantly black rural counties. (Again in) Jefferson County, home to Birmingham and its whiter suburbs, turnout exceeded the 2014 governor’s race by about 30 percent, and Jones nearly matched Hillary Clinton’s vote total there. Other populous, heavily African-American counties, including Montgomery and Dallas County, where Selma is, also exceeded their 2014 turnout.

Following last month’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey, when African-Americans helped vault Democrats to victories, the Alabama race is another sign that the party’s most loyal voters are fired up.

Same numbers, different view.

So are there any lessons to be learned for Texas Democrats?  Oh, perhaps 'motivate the minority vote' (in our case, both blacks and Latin@s).  I would add 'stop reflexively blaming people who won't vote for Coke or Pepsi', like this moron:

There's a 5,000 vote margin & 15,000 write in votes. Can all you third parties /write ins stop ruining every election for me? #AlabamaSenateElection pic.twitter.com/6SwMEmBos2

— Matt Krackenberger (@matthewkrack) December 13, 2017

Most of those write-ins helped Jones, because they were Republicans who couldn't vote for Moore, but couldn't vote for a Democrat either.  Most importantly, Democrats might heed the words of Charles Barkley from last night.

"They've taken the black vote and the poor vote for granted for a long time. It's time for Democrats to get off their asses... This is a wake up call for Democrats to do better for black people and poor white people."

Here's something Jones, and every other Democrat I can think of, can start reforming immediately. For his part, Jones is pretty good but not great on the issues (he supports fewer regulations and a tax cut for businesses, and is mostly using the non-specific verbiage I find increasingly annoying: 'living wage' and 'healthcare a human right' without further detail.  He'll also have plenty of opportunities to demonstrate the degree to which he is "willing to reach across the aisle" *retch* over the course of the next two years.

A key part of Jones’ strategy in the past few weeks is to make clear to Alabama voters that he is willing to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans, said Jones campaign chairman Giles Perkins.

"I think a lot of the voters ... are interested in a guy like Doug that's willing to reach across the aisle and work with anybody that's got good ideas, and some of these ads communicate that," Perkins said.

That Politico link reveals that in addition to his other troubles, Moore was buried under an avalanche of teevee ads by Jones; something all the establishment politicos, consultants, and their sycophants will point to as a 'key to victory', reinforcing the current corrupt model.  As for his evaluation period, Jones is serving out the remainder of AG Jeff Sessions' term, and will have to defend the seat in 2020 (scroll to the bottom of this link, while noting the peculiar law in Alabama about how write-in votes are counted a week after election day).

What's going to be the most fun is watching the establishment Republicans and the Roypublicans tear each other to pieces.  This is the fight we have all been waiting for.

Immediately after Jones’s victory, establishment-aligned Republicans in Washington were assailing Moore and Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, as having handed a Senate seat in the reddest of red states to the Democrats.

“Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the president of the United States into his fiasco,” said Steven Law, who runs a super PAC controlled by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader.

But Moore’s allies placed the blame for the loss on McConnell, who withdrew his support after the allegations first emerged that Moore had pursued teenage girls sexually or romantically.

“They colluded with the Democrats to undermine a pro-Trump candidate like Judge Moore just like they are going to try to do that in 2018 to myself and other pro-Trump candidates,” said Corey Stewart, who is challenging Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia and attended Moore’s election night party. “We’re going through a civil war in the Republican Party.”

Except there's no Abe Lincoln to save the Union this time.

Moore’s loss will only exacerbate tensions between Senate leaders and the party’s grass-roots and will probably play out in a series of House and Senate primaries in 2018. And if Republicans continue to nominate candidates who are too controversial to win general elections, the party’s internal divisions may cost them control of Congress.

From the New York Times' lips to the Flying Spaghetti Monster's ears.  Keep an eye out to see how many Lone Star GOPedophiles -- like Greg Abbott, to name one -- overplay their hand reaching out to the Jade Helm/Bathroom Bill/Trump Train Caucus in Texas.  Forcing the RPT statewides to pick a side in the Trump-or-sanity sweepstakes, as a campaign tactic, will go a long way toward helping a few Texas Democrats' chances in 2018.