#RaiseYourVoice - No More Wars

Obama will leave troops in Afghanistan into the last year of presidency.

Sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s — it's difficult to pinpoint an exact moment — the nation we had known as Afghanistan collapsed into civil war and chaos. And since September 2001, the United States has viewed that chaos as too dangerous to ignore.

That is, in its most fundamental terms, why the US has been at war in Afghanistan for now 14 years. And it's why President Obama, after coming into office in 2009 pledging to end the war, will announce today that he is not withdrawing after all. The next president will come into office overseeing the longest war in US history.

But what he or she will inherit isn't really a war in the traditional sense, but rather a mission — small but Sisyphean — that everyone knows is doomed: to temporarily stave off Afghanistan's inevitable collapse, a few months at a time. The war is already lost, and has been for years.

He and Vladimir Putin -- that is to say, the United States and Russia -- are already in a proxy war in Syria, technically against IS, but bombing each other's 'enemies of their friends'.  The CIA is again exposed as bloody muckraker.  From October 10, the AP account...

CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on President Bashar Assad's forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.

Over the past week, Russia has directed parts of its air campaign against U.S.-funded groups and other moderate opposition in a concerted effort to weaken them, the officials say. The Obama administration has few options to defend those it had secretly armed and trained.

The Russians "know their targets, and they have a sophisticated capacity to understand the battlefield situation," said Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee and was careful not to confirm a classified program. "They are bombing in locations that are not connected to the Islamic State."

Then there's Iraq (the part of it comparatively stable), uncontrolled western Iraq, Yemen and the Saudi peninsula, and Africa.  Obama has sent three hundred military advisers into Cameroon on a Boko Haram excursion.

The Drone Papers remind us that the tactic is not simply utilizing a new technology -- as the US did to end WWII, as the history books tell us -- but implementing a policy of extrajudicial assassinations, and as Hillary Clinton and the rest of the neoliberals in the Democratic Party continue to reveal, the strategy is endless war.  War without end, amen.

(A)ny doubts about whether endless war – literally – is official American doctrine should be permanently erased by this week’s comments from two leading Democrats, both former top national security officials in the Obama administration, one of whom is likely to be the next American president.

Leon Panetta, the long-time Democratic Party operative who served as Obama’s defense secretary and CIA director, said this week of Obama’s new bombing campaign: “I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war.” Only in America are new 30-year wars spoken of so casually, the way other countries speak of weather changes. He added that the war “will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.” And elsewhere: not just a new decades-long war with no temporal limits, but no geographic ones either. He criticized Obama – who has bombed 7 predominantly Muslim countries plus the Muslim minority in the Phillipines (almost double the number of countries Bush bombed) – for being insufficiently militaristic, despite the fact that Obama officials themselves have already instructed the public to think of The New War “in terms of years.”

Then we have Hillary Clinton, whom Panetta gushed would make a “great” president. At an event in Ottawa (last week), she proclaimed that the fight against these “militants” will “be a long-term struggle” that should entail an “information war” as “well as an air war.” The new war, she said, is “essential” and the U.S. shies away from fighting it “at our peril.” Like Panetta  -- and most establishment Republicans -- Clinton made clear in her book that virtually all of her disagreements with Obama’s foreign policy were the by-product of her view of Obama as insufficiently hawkish, militaristic and confrontational.

She has stated directly in recent weeks that when she is president, the United States will preemptively strike Iran.   Her language since the Iranian peace accord negotiated by her successor at State, John Kerry, has hardly been any less harsh.

Not even Bernie Sanders, with his "feed at the trough with the rest of the pork" mentality, bringing the bacon home to Vermont, is representative of enough hope for change in stopping any of these wars.  It's good for business, after all.

At this point, it is literally inconceivable to imagine the U.S. not at war. It would be shocking if that happened in our lifetime. U.S. officials are now all but openly saying this. “Endless War” is not dramatic rhetorical license but a precise description of America’s foreign policy.

It’s not hard to see why. A state of endless war justifies ever-increasing state power and secrecy and a further erosion of rights. It also entails a massive transfer of public wealth to the “homeland security” and weapons industry -- which the US media deceptively calls the “defense sector”.

Just (last week), Bloomberg reported: “Led by Lockheed Martin Group, the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.” Particularly exciting is that “investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq”; moreover, “the U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.” ISIS is using U.S.-made ammunition and weapons, which means U.S. weapons companies get to supply all sides of The New Endless War; can you blame investors for being so giddy?

Where will it end?

Only when we the people say so.  Only when we say "STOP" to military advisers and CIA-financed destabilization efforts, which lead to special forces operations and then boots on the ground, which lead to flag-draped coffins and hearses with 'heroes' traveling down streets lined with 'Murricans holding flags, and military parades, and yellow ribbons and finally granite memorials.  Not to mention the mangled limbs and minds of the veterans of these wars who are left to suffer the after-effects, or war crimes like torture, or the loss of one's freedoms at home in the form of warrantless wiretapping and municipal police armed like the US military itself.

You'll also have to do without the war stories told by old warhorses, and the glamorous movies made about war, like 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'American Sniper' and the like.

It will not be a simple task.

War – in all its ever-changing permutations – thus enables an endless supply of power and profit to flow to those political and economic factions that control the government regardless of election outcomes. And that’s all independent of the vicarious sense of joy, purpose and fulfillment which the sociopathic Washington class derives from waging risk-free wars, as Adam Smith so perfectly described in Wealth of Nations 235 years ago:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.

We must raise our voices:  No.  More. Wars.  Enough already.  The bombing must stop, the war machine spending must stop, and the soldiers must come home.  We have to heal the warriors and ourselves so that the world can begin healing.

We must send this message loudly and clearly, with our voices and our keyboards and our actions, so loudly and clearly that they hear us and heed us.  That requires voting, and not for a member of the Demoblicans or Republicrats who support endless war.  It requires sacrificing a lot of your free time, when you'd rather be watching television or playing a game on your phone or whatever pastime you have used to inure yourself to the shooting and killing and maiming and dying.

If we cannot win this battle then we will lose all the rest.  It may be too late already.

Raise Your Voice.

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.

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 review.  Update: 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.

Real presidential contenders debating reality-based issues

Thank goodness for a dose of sanity.

But it's not without its flaws (these are Democrats, after all; as someone once mangled a pair of metaphors, they have a lay-down hand if they don't shoot themselves in the head).

-- CNN has an extra lectern, bubblewrap still on the handtruck, just in case Joe Biden changes his mind at the last minute.  They could have let Lawrence Lessig use it, of course, but he doesn't poll high enough.  Because the polling outfits rarely include his name in the polls.

He's thinking about an independent run for president as a result of all these cold shoulders.  I hope the Justice Party and Rocky Anderson are recruiting him hard.

-- Then again, he'll have the same problem in the fall as Jill Stein (and Gary Johnson of the Libs, and the Justice Party's nominee and the Constitution Party's and so on).  We need more debates and we need more candidates in all of them.  That's good for democracy.  Such as we have left, that is.

-- Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, twice asked about Bernie Sanders, could not bring herself to say his name.  She also disinvited the vice chair of the DNC from attending tonight's event after Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii -- her colleague in the US House as well as her second in command at the party's HQ -- called for more debates.

Petty, vindictive, crass, ridiculous and shameful.  DWS needs to go. And fast.

-- Hillary Clinton went to the steps of Donald Trump's Las Vegas casino with employees of his who want to form a union and blasted him.  I like this, but she really needs to wait until she's the nominee before she starts her general election campaign.  I might even get to liking this, but my first reaction is: "poor you":

Hillary Clinton says women are “held to a totally different standard” in politics — and that it’s been that way since she first ran for office.

“You’re expected to be both strong and vulnerable at the same time,” Clinton said in BuzzFeed’s “Another Round” podcast that was published online Sunday. “That’s not easy to do.”

The Democratic frontrunner said it’s “frustrating” for women in “any profession” to be criticized for being themselves.

“It’s just so hard to get people to realize that, you know, we’re all different,” Clinton said. “We may all be women, but we all have our strengths, we all have our weaknesses. We get up every morning and do the best we can. And eventually people either get you or they don’t.”

She's spot on about the sexism, and being treated differently because of her genitalia and all that.  I don't discount it, nor the fact that it's a consultant-crafted appeal to women who ought to be voting for her without encouragement (sort of like when Wendy Davis ran for governor, but I digress).  Her strategy appears to be a riff on that '80's perfume jingle:

I can bring home the bacon, 
fry it up in a pan, 
and never ever let you forget you're a man
'Cause I'm a woman

She's going to have to deal with sexism, just as Barack Obama has had to face the most craven and ugly personal smears from conservatives throughout the duration of his presidency.  See, it's possible to criticize a president's policy without pictures of bones through his nose, or if he is dressed as for a pilgrimage to Mecca.

She is going to have to endure the misogynists and chauvinists for the next eight and a half years, though.  Sorry about that, Mrs. Clinton.  Maybe you can influence some change in that societal regard when you're elected.  Obama, simply by being president, didn't change structural racism in America in all the ways we had hoped, but that's not on him, either.  Just do your thing and let the Republican heads explode and the pieces fall where they may.  (Or Democratic heads, as the case may be.)

I was raised by a steel magnolia.  I believe they can be great leaders.  Just please don't feel like you need to prove anything to the guys by starting any more wars, mmkay?

Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and James Webb all have their work cut out for them.

Update: This is the best viewer's guide I've read for tonight.

Green Party's Jill Stein touring Texas this week

Eight stops -- Dallas, Arlington, Fort Worth, Houston, Laredo, McAllen, Karnes City, and San Antonio -- in six days.  From the press release, and also here...

October 15th
Press Conference 10am, Dallas City Hall

Arriving in Dallas Thursday morning, Dr. Stein will hold a press conference regarding climate change and her campaign visit. In the afternoon she will take a tour of South Dallas with local activists, discussing the impacts of police brutality and environmental justice.

In the evening, she will participate in a panel discussion on the intersection of police brutality, poverty, and immigration at The Act of Change, 3200 S. Lancaster Rd., Suite 320, Dallas, at 7:00pm.

October 16th - Arlington and Fort Worth

On Friday Dr. Stein will tour fracking sites with Liveable Arlington, followed by a panel discussion at First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church, 1959 Sandy Lane, Fort Worth, at 3pm.

October 17th - Houston

In Houston on Saturday morning, Dr. Stein will briefly speak to the Chorizo Menudo breakfast gathering before joining the Harris County Green Party at their booth at the East End Street Festival on Saturday afternoon between 1 – 4pm.

On Saturday night, Harris County Greens will host a party for the progressive community.  Bring your poetry, instruments, and participatory spirits to a backyard social and open mic and Slam/Jam, 7 – 9pm. Details available on their Facebook event page.

October 18th - McAllen and Laredo

Sunday at noon, Dr. Stein will meet with local activists at Archer Park in McAllen.

From there she will travel to Laredo for a 5:30 – 7:30pm public appearance at TAMIU Student Center, 5201 University Blvd., Laredo, followed by dinner with the Webb County Greens.

October 19th - Karnes City and San Antonio

At 11am, Dr. Stein will visit Karnes County Residential Center, 409 FM 1144, Karnes City for discussion and Q&A with Sister Elizabeth Riebschlauger and other local activists.

In the evening, San Antonio residents will have an opportunity to meet and greet the presidential candidate between 6 – 8pm at The Friendly Spot Ice House, 943 S. Alamo St, San Antonio.

October 20 - San Antonio

Morning media availability before Stein departs. 

More from DBC.

Latest mayoral poll of very little value

I won't even celebrate its reveal of a huge Adrian Garcia slump.

Sylvester Turner remains the front-runner, but Adrian Garcia has lost his once firm grip on second place and Bill King rises into the top tier of contenders in the race for Houston mayor.

That's the headline from the latest poll conducted for KHOU 11 News and Houston Public Media, TV-8 and News 88.7, a survey indicating Garcia and King are now fighting it out for a chance to face Turner in a runoff.

Turner heads the pack of mayoral candidates at 19%, maintaining the lead he commanded in the same poll last May. No other candidate in this poll stands in double-digits.

Garcia and King tie for second-place, both supported by 9% of surveyed voters. Chris Bell comes in fourth at 6%, followed by Steve Costello at 5% and Ben Hall at 4%.

Still, a large number of voters haven't made up their minds. The survey of 567 likely voters conducted between September 25 and October 6 showed 42% undecided.

This is too many uncommitteds to glean any value from.  Last week's polling from Washington-based American Strategies had 25% who couldn't make up their minds, half as many KHOU/HPM's first poll in June, which had 53% undecided.  So you're telling me after all of this phone-calling and door knocking and mailers and TV commercials over the summer and early fall that only 11% more of the electorate has managed to pick a candidate?

No.  Sorry, that's worthless data to me.  I think they're doing a little better on their polling of HERO, which is 43% yes, 37 no, and 18 unsure, but even that many Houstonians who don't know how they'll vote on the ordinance has too much doubt in it.

They got it right on Sylvester Turner being one of two going to December -- that's been the trendline for a couple of weeks now -- but that just seems like a lucky shot compared to everything else.

"I would say Sylvester is as close to a lock on having it as you can get," Rice University political scientist Bob Stein said, referring to one of two spots in December's anticipated runoff.

Otherwise there's nothing to get excited about here.  This poll is crap.  That's too bad for UH's Bob Stein... and also Bill King.

King has been the chief beneficiary of Garcia's decline, mainly because of growing support from Republican voters. King and Costello have been fighting it out for GOP hearts and minds, emphasizing financial issues like the city's growing pension obligations.

But Costello's backing of the drainage fee to bankroll flood control infrastructure has hurt him with many Republican voters, who consider it a poorly implemented new tax.

"Bill King has gained tremendously," Stein said. "He was barely measurable in our May poll. He's now at 9 percentage points. Most importantly from our May poll, his gain appears to be from Republican voters."

Republicans polled for this survey are breaking for King over Costello by a 4-to-1 ratio, Stein said.

Too much spin, too many undecideds, too much uncertainty all around to be making these statements, Dr. Stein.  Take all of what he says with a few shakers of salt, but don't put your blood pressure at risk.

King is going to spin it even faster than Stein with his next fundraising appeals.  And hey, if they somehow got it right and I didn't, you'll see me with the plateful of blackbird and a knife and fork.  But if I'm giving the pep talk to anybody's campaign staff today, those words are: Ignore this poll.  It's still anybody's game.

Update: Danny Surman dives deeper, comes to the same conclusion.

The Pre-Debate Columbus Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is ready for a real debate -- such as, "Why is Columbus Day still a national holiday?" -- as it brings you this week's roundup.  (Oh, and some serious presidential candidates debating reality-based issues as well.)

Off the Kuff examined two polls of the Houston mayor's race and HERO referendum.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos, and contributing to Daily Kos, shared an article she read in the Houston Chronicle. It seems that a certain group is determined to white wash U.S. and Texas history: The Texas Textbook Fiasco.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme objects to police chiefs wanting to stir up trouble with 'in your face' declarations of their religion, which is the opposite of community policing. Police are hired by the public to promote the general welfare, not the chief's animus to diversity.

Socratic Gadfly takes a Washington Post columnist to the woodshed for using tortured logic to claim Hillary is actually more progressive than Bernie.

TXsharon at Bluedaze has the latest on the green-washing of Denton's frackers.

Ahead of the first Democratic candidates debate, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs heard the Clinton machine finally rumbling to life. He also listened to more dripping about her email, and mused on her policy pronouncements regarding the TPP and Glass-Steagall.

Dos Centavos noted Hillary's flip-flop on Obama's deportations.

From Harris County's Johnson-Rayburn-Richards dinner over the weekend, Egberto Willies has a short interview with keynote speaker Barney Frank that Sanders supporters aren't going to like.

Letters from Texas writes about Dallas County DA Susan Hawk state representative Garnet Coleman's mental health issues, and how he was able to master them.

Texas Leftist posts about Houston's "Riverwalk", the freshly renovated Buffalo Bayou Park, walkways, and bikeways.

At the 4th anniversary of Occupy Houston, Neil at All People Have Value recalled the accomplishments of the Occupy protests. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

The Texas Election Law Blog analyzes the seven constitutional amendments on the November ballot.

TFN Insider excerpts portions of the report that confirms the harmful consequences of Texas' anti-abortion legislation.

Mike McGuff, Houston's media tracker, reports that there will be a mayoral debate televised this Friday night by KPRC and Telemundo.  And the most recent poll from KHOU has Turner well at the lead, followed by a surging Bill King and a slumping Adrian Garcia.

BARC Houston lists two free spay-and-neuter and pet wellness events in the city this week.

Ty Clevenger's Lawflog reports on still another investigation necessary that involves the tangled business relationships between AG Ken Paxton and Collin Co. DA Greg Willis.

Bonddad is feeling his mortality as he contemplates that another neoliberal in the White House is going to mean the same old decline for the middle class.

D Magazine has an in-depth look at the troubled story of Dallas County DA Susan Hawk.

Paradise in Hell ponders redistricting.

Austin On Your Feet documents the problems of homelessness.

Kevin Barton argues against state Proposition 7, one of the constitutional amendments that will be on your November ballot.

Jenny Dial Creech shares what it's like to be a female sportswriter.

The TSTA Blog wishes there was a STAAR test for legislators.

Fascist Dyke Motors belts out an old Tammy Wynette song.

And Eater Houston has the deets on a local bar offering a drink menu today called "Christopher Columbus was an Asshole".

Sunday Funnies

Your headlines as the Longhorns prepare to ... nemmind (Update)

I'm so old I can remember when OU-Texas was something to look forward to.  Now they're ready to lynch tar and feather fire Charlie Strong in Austin, even as Jeff Davis sulks in a crate somewhere.  Just remember: when Red ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

That's what they call progress in Austin.  Where even the Democrats speculate in real estate, drive up the cost of living, and exercise fiscal austerity during the legislative session.

-- Hillary Clinton lost ten polling points in the past week, four to Bernie Sanders and four to Joe Biden.  The other two went back to the GOP.  This is not a poll you will see bar-graphed on jobsanger.  Still, nothing for her supporters to worry about.  On the bright side, she had a good meeting with the Black Lives Matter activists.

Johnetta Elzie, who focuses on police militarization and violence, attended the meeting. She told Business Insider that while the conversation was frank and productive, Clinton didn't always have direct answers to questions posed by different attendees.

"Hillary is a good listener. But she still has lots of room to grow when it comes to listening to black people actually talk about the issues that are affecting them, vs. how she perceives the issues to affect us," Elzie said.

Really; don't we all (that aren't black, I mean)?  That gets an 'amen' from this atheist.

-- Donald Trump is secretly looking for a way out of the GOP horse race.  But he's probably going to snarl and rant and spend a lot more money before he finds the right reason and takes it.

In unmistakable ways over the last two weeks, whether he has intended to or not, Donald J. Trump has started to articulate a way out of the presidential race: a verbal parachute that makes clear he has contemplated the factors that would cause him to end his bid.

It is a prospect that many in the political establishment have privately considered as the actual voting grows closer.

Go on, read them and see if you're buying. 

While Mr. Trump still leads major national polls and surveys in early voting states, that lead has recently shrunk nationally, and the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed his support eroding in New Hampshire, the first primary state. His recent comments have lent credence to the views of political observers who had long believed the perennially self-promoting real estate mogul would ultimately not allow himself to face the risk of losing.

“Even back in the summer, when he was somewhat defying gravity, somewhat defying conventional wisdom, it seemed to me there would be a moment when reality sets in,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political strategist who is based in California. “He would not leave himself to have his destiny settled by actual voters going to the polls or the caucuses.”

Yes.  He does the firing, not you. 

Stuart Stevens, who was the chief strategist to Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race, also doubts that Mr. Trump will stay in over the long haul. “Trump’s the only person that pre-spun his exit — it’s rather remarkable,” Mr. Stevens said.

He pointed to one of the issues that has nagged the Trump candidacy from the outset — how much he is willing to spend on the race, particularly if his polling numbers start to sag. “I think we would all say this is a more serious endeavor if he was spending $2 million a week out of his own pocket, and I think it’s another sign that he’s not in this to win,” Mr. Stevens said.

No.  It's not about the money and never has been.  It's about Trump's ego.  If he can get someone else elected, that's what he'll do and enjoy it just as much as if it was him getting sworn in.  "The Apprentice", starring Ted Cruz as the President of the United States.

Stuart Stevens: I have HBO, I've watched 'Game Change', and sir, you're no Woody Harrelson in a fat suit Steve Schmidt.  Get out of politics and go back to writing travel books.

That's all the conservative BS I can stand for the weekend.  Now I'm going to enjoy the rest of the Indian summer weather we're having.  Please do the same.

Update: Way to save Charlie's bacon, Horns.

Not Trump and Carson but Rubio and Cruz

Maybe you had not noticed, but the real black neurosurgeon who has been performing a frontal lobotomy on himself all week has drowned out The Donald's rants.  And even the Democrats have gotten more chatter because of their upcoming debate.  Be sure and remind Debbie Wasserman Schultz again about that.

I've worked to limit the outrage and/or snark about stupid things Republicans say every single day (Juanita Jean's always there for you) not because it's so much fun but because it's so time-consuming trying to keep up.  There's not much blogged here about what Stephen Colbert or Trevor Noah or Larry Wilmore say each night because Egberto's on that beat.  The Speaker's race is indeed a hilarious clusterfuck, but in the grand scheme of the local election we have coming up and then the presidential one next year, not all that B a FD to me.  And as you know by now, campaign finance reports and teevee commercials are best left to the geeks, wonks, and consultants who thrive on that.

So with three Hillary Clinton posts this week, and traffic sagging until I returned to the municipal elections yesterday (and with traffic back through the roof), I want to get in a few elbows on the GOP presidential field.

On Labor Day weekend at the AFL-CIO barbecue in Pasadena, somebody asked me if Scott Walker still had a chance to be the nominee.  I told her it was at least possible he could regroup, blow some Koch up his nose and reignite.  Go back and look at the September archives to see that he was carried out feet first two weeks later.  Since then all the rage among conservative pundits and prophets has gone from "who's next to quit" to "ZOMG is it really going to be Trump or Carson".

I'm gonna say that if either one of those two winds up being the Republican nominee, even a ticket of Lawrence Lessig and Jim Webb could beat that.  Like a red-headed stepchild.

So with the tenuous assumption that Republicans are smarter than this -- that's why they're so rich, of course -- somebody else is going to be at the top of the heap when the walls fall and the guns are silenced.  My take today is that it will be either Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, and here's why.

By process of elimination, it won't be Bobby Jindal or Lindsey Graham or Chris Christie or George Pataki or James Gilmore or Rick Santorum or Rand Paul.  Mullah Huckabee still has the longest of realistic shots thanks to Kim Davis, but he's being eclipsed on the strength of his own foibles.  Picking a fight with a bag of chips is a dead-ender.

That leaves Jeb!, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, and Ted and Marco.  You could scramble these five every possible way except with Bush and Rubio together (two candidates from the same state can run together but it gets problematic in the Electoral College, so discount the possibility of a pair of Floridians to zero), and you'd have a decent enough Republican duo to be a threat to Clinton-Castro or Sanders-Warren.  Since we're dreaming, after all.

But for the purpose of this exercise, let me veer away from my previously stated prediction of the top two and make it Kasich-Rubio (I've suggested previously -- scroll to the bottom -- that Kasich-Condoleeza Rice might just be too tough for the Democrats to beat, and I still believe that).  Rubio would be better as a VP than Rice not because of his Latino appeal but because of his evangelical cross-breeding.  Condi claims to be a libertarian on choice, and that damages her with the brand in this cycle.  The Bible-thumpers love Ted too, of course, and here's where you should disregard the rain-making reporting; Cruz doubled up Rubio in money in the third quarter.  Cruz excites the TeaBagger base with outbursts like "hate slaw!", but he's alienated too many inside players.  He's not going to settle for second place, either.  Ever the gladiator, he will affect the presidential process just like he does the Speaker's race, but in the end he'll content himself with going back to the Senate and taking another shot at Hillary in 2020.  He needs to mend some fences, make a few friends in the process.

If I'm wrong, though, and Cruz is at the top of the ticket, Clinton beats him like a drum.  Even Bernie Sanders beats Ted Cruz, and it wouldn't be all that close.

It goes without blogging but I'll write it anyway: Bush and Fiorina don't have the wherewithal to get it done this time.  Both have a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease, and Bush has a peculiar "finger-in-the-air" ailment.  Four years ago the GOP exhausted all the certifiably insane options -- Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Santorum -- before settling back on Mitt Romney.  Bush isn't going to be that lucky, no matter how many favors he thinks he can call in.  The base simply will not allow that to happen again.

Kasich (Ohio) and Rubio (Florida) are both from swing states the GOP has to have to win.  Cruz and Fiorina don't help enough electorally.  Condi, like Carly, is also from Cali; that's a non-starter for one but not the other.  Rice is a DC insider/gravitas pick as much as she checks off the right demographic boxes.  And like Dick Cheney, nobody really knows where she came from (born in Alabama, raised in Colorado, much of her adult life associated with Stanford University when she wasn't in Washington).  But I think, again, that she's not extreme enough for the bottom of the ticket when they tap a so-called moderate for president.

Rubio is Tea Party without the tricorn hat.  He's said enough crazy things -- climate change, border walls, etc. -- to earn some street cred.  Ultimately he's just less sour than Cruz, and when it comes to coconuts, that's important.

So the ticket will be some combo of "moderate" and rabid dog, with the assumption that Rice cannot be recruited for V-P.  Kasich-Rubio is my story today and we'll see how long it sticks.

Update: I could be just as wrong as either Ted or Donald.  Or both.  We shall see.

New mayoral poll same as the old one; HERO is winning

The poll finds Adrian Garcia and Sylvester Turner tied for the lead, with a second tier of closely-clustered candidates, including Chris Bell, Bill King and Stephen Costello. Digging deeper into the numbers yields more insight about those candidates with stronger name identification and favorable ratings, along with those candidates whom the voter would even consider supporting. Complete polling results may be found at www.har.com/poll.

Specifically, the Houston Association of Realtors commissioned a DC firm named American Strategies for this poll conducted over three days in the fourth week of September.  It found Turner and Garcia tied with 19%, then Bell and King at 10%, then Costello at 9%, and then Ben Hall with 6%, Marty McVey 1%, and the rest at statistically nothing.  "Undecided" actually won with 25%.  In late June, it was Turner 16, Garcia 12, Bell 8, Hall and King 3, Costello 2, and poor McVey stuck at 1%.  So everybody except McVey has moved a few undecideds into their column (that figure was 53% in the old survey).  Charles has your deep dive; I'll add these impressions.

-- The Republicans in the race strengthened the most over the summer, but still don't appear to be a threat for the runoff.  That is, if you don't consider Adrian Garcia a Republican, which I do.  He is certainly the most conservative Democrat running, and he has significant conservative financial backing.  Most importantly, he's not being scuffed by his terrible record as Harris County sheriff.  Of all the data here, that's the point I most disbelieve.  But hey, if I'm wrong and his incompetence doesn't catch up to him by Election Night, I'll own it.

-- Correspondingly, if it turns out to be Turner and Garcia in the runoff, that should be a pretty easy choice for us lefties in December.  I'm still going to vote for the most progressive candidate in the general, and that's Bell.

-- Undecideds appear to be mostly white conservative women.  Who gets the most help if and when they do decide -- King or Costello?  I suppose the teevee ads they run will get refocused (fewer football and baseball games and more Fox and Friends).

-- HERO stands at 52% in favor.  That is, in a word, awesome.  The haters muster just 37%, and only 10% are undecided.  That lede is essentially buried in both the HAR press release and the Chronicle article, and the newspaper, in its otherwise-tired fundraising analysis, notes that HERO supporters have doubled the money of Hotze and ilk.  More and better on this topic, as usual, from Kuff.

Grand Old Professor Mark Jones is always available to piss on the parade.

... Rice University political scientist Mark Jones cautioned that the poll does not account for non-traditional city voters who may show up at the polls this year to vote on the ordinance, known as HERO.

It also likely under-represents support for Turner, Hall and potentially Garcia, Jones said, as it surveyed lower percentages of African American and Hispanic voters than are expected to turn out in November, given that there are two black candidates and one Hispanic candidate in the top-tier.

Sixty two percent of respondents identified as white, 20 percent as black, 10 percent as Hispanic and 2 percent as Asian.

"This survey would appear to be underestimating African American turnout by at least 10 percent and perhaps a little more," Jones said.

"If there are people who are being driven to turnout by the HERO ordinance or by Adrian Garcia's mobilization of the Hispanic community, they would not be represented," he added.

I cannot wait to see if this conservative jackass is right or wrong.

Updates: Via Mike McGruff, the top seven mayoral candidates will debate on teevee on Friday, October 16 -- that's the weekend before early voting begins the following Monday --  to be telecast by KPRC and Telemundo.  That debate is also sponsored by the League of Women Voters and Houston Baptist University's law school.  Get tickets to the event or live-streaming info and more at the link.

And a second mayoral poll came out today, sponsored by the conservative Houston Realty Business Coalition (they've endorsed Bill King) and it shows...

• Turner with 24%
• King with 18 (LOL)
• Garcia with 14
• Bell with 11
• Costello and Hall with 8
• three percent unsure, four percent someone else.

And as you might have guessed, it also thinks HERO is losing, 31-40 with 13% undecided and 16% declining to answer.

"We're still not sure what the electorate will look like, so polling the electorate has been a little dicey," University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said.

[...]

Rottinghaus said HRBC's poll likely over-represents younger and Republican voters, while under-representing African-Americans. "That's probably why you see King doing better in this poll, because Republicans tend to be more heavily represented."

In other words, it's garbage.

Clinton comes out against the TPP and against Glass-Steagall

Somewhat equivocal, but we expected that.

"As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about (the Pacific Rim trade pact). I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set."

We'll get to Val's bar in a minute.

Hillary Clinton says she doesn’t support reinstating a Depression-era banking law that separated commercial and investment banks because her forthcoming proposal for U.S. financial reform is “more comprehensive.”

Two items, same note: 'I can do better'.  Let's see about that.  First, on the trade bill she formerly supported...

Clinton explained her skepticism by mentioning two of the most common objections to the deal among left-leaning critics: that it's too favorable to pharmaceutical companies, and that it doesn't include language prohibiting other countries from manipulating their currencies to gain a trade advantage.

Thanks, Bernie!

The lack of currency manipulation language is a key concern of the labor movement, whose support could be crucial in next year's Democratic primary elections. Meanwhile, public health groups have raised concerns about language in the TPP that could raise the cost of medicines worldwide.

Obama faces a tough vote on the trade deal next year, and Clinton's comments won't help. They will give political cover to wavering congressional Democrats who want to help Obama but are also feeling grassroots pressure from labor unions and other liberal groups.

Clinton's comments also represent something of a flip-flop. During her time as Obama's secretary of state, from 2009 to 2013, Clinton repeatedly promoted the trade deal. While the final text is different from versions being considered when she was in office, neither of the concerns she's raising today — about benefits to pharmaceutical companies and the lack of language on currency manipulation — have changed since then.

More from HuffPo, and the following from the BBC.

(Sanders) was likely to bring the topic up during the debate and use it against the former Secretary of State, who once called the agreement the "gold standard" for trade negotiations.

By backing away from the TPP, Mrs. Clinton could also be anticipating the arrival of another, more formidable opponent for the Democratic nomination: Joe Biden.

The vice president has made increasingly clear moves toward a presidential bid, and given his current job it would be extremely difficult for him to oppose a key piece of his boss's presidential legacy.

Mr. Biden's campaign would be likely to rely heavily on working-class, union support -- a segment of the Democratic electorate that is firmly opposed to new trade deals. Mrs. Clinton could be digging her trenches now, before the battle commences.

Pretty much a pure political move, designed to appeal to the interests of and/or avoid the criticism of those who would rather be voting for her challengers.  Savvy and craven, a Clinton hallmark.

On Glass-Steagall, the post-Depression law that got banks out of the investment business, created the FDIC, and which was repealed in 1999 by her husband, leading ultimately to the Second Great Depression of 2008...

Who supports it? Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley — two of Clinton’s challengers for the Democratic presidential nomination — as well as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who along with Arizona Sen. John McCain, reintroduced legislation to revive Glass-Steagall this year.

“Despite the progress we’ve made since 2008, the biggest banks continue to threaten our economy,” Warren said in a statement introducing the legislation. “The biggest banks are collectively much larger than they were before the crisis, and they continue to engage in dangerous practices that could once again crash our economy.”

Both Sanders and O’Malley have hit Clinton for her close ties to Wall Street.

“Her closeness with big banks on Wall Street is sincere,” O’Malley said in July. “It’s heartfelt, long established and well known.”

Why doesn’t Hillary? “The big banks are not the only thing we have to worry about,” Clinton said in Iowa Tuesday. “I’ve studied this real closely, and what I am proposing is we go after the risk, and if they are too big to manage, that is a risk and they should not continue. If they are so big that they are causing disruptions on the marketplace, that’s a risk.”

Clinton continued, “If you only reinstate Glass-Steagall, you don’t go after all these other institutions in what is called the shadow banking system — hedge funds and other financial entities that have too much power in our economy. I have what I consider to be a more comprehensive approach to what we need to do to rein in these institutions, including the big banks.”

The Democratic frontrunner also took a swipe at her rivals, like O’Malley, who are seeking to tie her to her husband’s repeal of Glass-Steagall.

“I’m going to go after what I think are the real problems, not the problems on the past,” Clinton said, “because what I’m interested in is stopping something like this from happening again.”

Reinstatement of Glass-Steagall has bipartisan Senate support, as the bill sponsors Warren and McCain would indicate.  The House is probably a different story.  If a Madam President thinks she can get a more rigorous financial regulation bill through the Congress a year and a half from now -- especially with a Democratic Senate led by Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) -- then the next policy announcement we will hear is that Mrs. Clinton supports full legalization of marijuana, because she's high.

Other than the obvious pandering, we seem to have her moving in the left direction.  Which is, again, the most I believe we could hope for.

Scattershooting more of Hillary's email

Lest anyone think I am a convert from yesterday's post, here's more headlines the front-runner (Clearly! Just ask Ted!) doesn't want to see...

Drip: "Second IT firm agrees to give FBI Clinton server data"

Hillary Clinton hired a Connecticut company to back up her emails on a “cloud” storage system, and her lawyers have agreed to turn whatever it contains over to the FBI, a personal familiar with the situation said Tuesday.

The disclosure came as a Republican Senate committee chairman, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, also asked the firm to turn over to the committee copies of any Clinton emails still in its possession.

There were conflicting accounts as to whether the development could lead to recovery of any of Clinton’s more than 31,000 personal emails, which she said she deleted from her private server upon turning over her work-related emails to the State Department, at its request, in December 2014.

[...]

The controversy seems sure to come up on Oct. 22, when Clinton is scheduled to testify to a House committee investigating the fatal 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. It was the panel’s chairman who first declared last March that she had “wiped” her server clean based on a letter from Clinton’s attorney.

For chronological perspective, that hearing will be the week after next week's Democratic contenders' debate, and we'll be a few days into early voting here in Houston for the mayor's and city council races.

Drip: "Hillary's #2 at State twice forwarded now-classified email to Clinton Foundation"

According to a new email chain shared with POLITICO by Citizens United, Cheryl Mills — Clinton's former chief of state at State — forwarded State Department background information about Rwanda and the Congo to the Clintons' philanthropic organization. Citizens United, a conservative activist group, obtained the messages via a Freedom of Information act lawsuit.

Former President Bill Clinton was visiting Africa, including Rwanda, around the time that Mills sent the email, which was mostly redacted. Former president Clinton was also considering giving Rwandan President Paul Kagame a plenary role at the Clinton Global Initiative, according to the emails.

If you still need to understand why this is something and not nothing...

Meanwhile, the FBI is currently investigating whether classified information was ever mishandled via Hillary Clinton's private email server. For months, Clinton maintained that she did not have classified information on her homemade email server, until government watchdogs unveiled that she did. After those reports, the campaign maintained that Clinton had not received messages that were "marked" classified at the time.

The State Department has agreed with that assessment, but the intelligence community inspector general does not and has argued many of the emails were indeed classified at the time in 2012.

Beyond the classification issue, Republicans and other transparency groups have questioned whether the foundation’s work, funded in part by foreign donors, ever influenced what happened at the State Department. Or if the foundation received preferential treatment.

Mills sat on the foundation’s board before becoming the department’s No. 2 official and returned to the board after leaving State in 2013. And she appeared to continue to advise the foundation while at State, according to other emails revealed by the Citizens United lawsuit. Republicans say those connections between Mills and the Clinton Foundation raise questions about whether the relationship was too close. 

Bold emphasis in the excerpt is mine.  Mishandling and/or willfully disclosing classified data is a federal crime, under various statutes.  Just ask David Petraeus.  Or Chelsea Manning.  Or Edward Snowden.

Drip: "Employees at company working with Clinton email server expressed concerns"

(T)his past August, a Platte River Networks employee wrote to a coworker that he was, "Starting to think this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy (sic) s**t."

"I just think if we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups, and that we can go public with our statement saying we have backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30days (sic), it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better," the unnamed employee continued.

The email was sent shortly after news emerged that the FBI was looking into the security of the server, and several months after it was revealed that Clinton exclusively used the private account to conduct State Department business.

Now Clinton has to be concerned about whether one of these IT people rats her out to the FBI in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Not to worry, Hillaryians: Bernie Sanders' campaign has a fatal flaw, and it's the candidate himself; he simply has too much integrity to win the White House.

“Bernie Sanders’s failure to become a member of either major political party excludes him from the network of cronyism and backroom deals required under our system to be elected,” said Davis Logsdon, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. “Though that failure alone would disqualify Sanders, the fact that he is not beholden to a major corporate interest or investment bank would also make him ineligible.”

Because of his ineligibility, Logsdon said, the Vermont senator would be unable to fund-raise the one billion dollars required under the current system to run for president. “The best source of a billion dollars is billionaires, and Sanders has alienated them,” he said. “Clearly he didn’t think this through.”

Logsdon said that Sanders might persist in his quest for the White House despite his ineligibility but that such an effort would be doomed to fail. “Our political system has been refined over the years specifically to keep people like Bernie Sanders out of the White House,” he said.

“The system works.”

Clinton machine finally rumbles to life

She's had a few good days, maybe she can string together a few more before the debate next week.  First: Saturday Night Live, Val the bartender, and her imitation of Trump.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's starring role on the season premiere of "Saturday Night Live," as usual, comes down to the same old question: Did she do herself any favors? "I've had a hard couple of 22 years," her double, Kate McKinnon, told the real-life presidential candidate. A hard couple of 22 months as well.

What was unique about Clinton's role on "SNL" was in fact that it was a role: Val, the bartender. Usually the idea is just to play a funnier, nicer, more human and more ironic version of one's self.

If at all possible.

Coming from an incorrigible Clinton non-supporter, she managed it.

She, or Val, even tried impersonating Donald Trump, and it's fair to say most viewers had seen or heard better.... But that didn't mean the skit didn't work for Clinton. It actually did because it broke down a standard go-to joke, of having the politician come face to face with their alternate-universe "SNL" version. That's almost always guaranteed a quick laugh. Not much else. Recall Tina Fey and Sarah Palin, or Amy Poehler and Clinton.

And turning the joke however very gently back on Clinton -- as someone late to her convictions on issues such as gay marriage or even the Keystone XL pipeline -- didn't hurt her, either.

Viewers got to see Clinton laugh, too. They don't see that often either. There hasn't been a lot to laugh about. "I wish you could be president," said the Hillary-McKinnon character. "Me too," said Hillary-Val the bartender.

Critics will argue that Clinton got a free campaign commercial (they won't be wrong). Or that she diminished her stature as a serious candidate (wrong -- many politicians eventually find their way to Studio 8H, including President Barack Obama in 2012).

"Millennial pandering" was the rap she got recently from a Salon Daily Beast columnist for doing an interview with Lena Dunham and her "Lennyletter" newsletter. (But don't all politicians pander?) She even introduced Miley Cyrus -- who was on her best behavior Saturday for the occasion -- for the show's first musical performance.

OK, pandering.

This is really all we've come to expect from our politicians.  Contrast her performance with one Bernie Sanders might make on the show in the near future.  Maybe he can be funnier, or more warm, and compared to his gruff Brooklynite demeanor, it would be hilarious.  We'll have to wait and see.

More importantly, the prohibitive favorite to replace John Boehner gave her a gift and she's using it to full advantage.

Hil­lary Clin­ton doesn’t want voters to for­get that a top Cap­it­ol Hill Re­pub­lic­an last week cred­ited the House Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Benghazi with hurt­ing her pres­id­en­tial cam­paign.

Clin­ton’s cam­paign is launch­ing a new na­tion­al cable TV ad that high­lights the re­cent com­ments by House Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Kev­in Mc­Carthy—re­marks that Demo­crats call proof that the GOP-led pan­el is de­signed as a polit­ic­al weapon against her.

“The Re­pub­lic­ans fi­nally ad­mit it,” states the nar­rat­or of the ad that will be­gin air­ing Tues­day. It then shows the re­marks last week by Mc­Carthy, who is seek­ing to be­come the next speak­er of the House.

“Every­body thought Hil­lary Clin­ton was un­beat­able, right? But we put to­geth­er a Benghazi spe­cial com­mit­tee,” Mc­Carthy said on Fox News late Tues­day night. “What are her num­bers today?”

The ad’s nar­rat­or then states: “The Re­pub­lic­ans have spent mil­lions at­tack­ing Hil­lary be­cause she’s fight­ing for everything they op­pose. From af­ford­able health care to equal pay, she’ll nev­er stop fight­ing for you, and the Re­pub­lic­ans know it.”

McCarthy may have shit the bed in more places than one.

The re­marks, which were badly out of step with long-stand­ing GOP claims that the com­mit­tee is not polit­ic­al, irked Re­pub­lic­ans in­clud­ing Rep. Jason Chaf­fetz, who is mount­ing an up­hill can­did­acy against Mc­Carthy for the speak­er’s gavel.

Rarely does a political opponent hand you such a large cudgel to beat them with.   But these are House Republicans, after all.  The best and brightest among them just aren't as smart as a fifth grader.

Then there's next Tuesday's debate, which won't have Joe Biden as part of it.  That is, as someone once said, a BFD.  Biden would steal the limelight to some degree simply by being there.  If Clinton triumphs in the debate, rumors of his jumping-in might lessen.

All five but one of the six declared candidates have been invited to participate, but expect three -- Clinton, Sanders, and Martin O'Malley -- to do the most talking.  There's going to be some good cop (Sanders) - bad cop (O'Malley ) beating on the front-runner.  If James Webb, Lawrence Lessig, and Lincoln Chafee don't go after Clinton as well -- no guarantees that Chafee or Lessig won't -- then she might be able to withstand the onslaught from Bernie and Martin a bit better.  Webb is well to her right on nearly every issue, including the Confederate flag, Chafee is a gimmick and Lessig is a one-trick pony.  A very important single trick he has, as even the Houston mayor's race has revealed, but still more sideshow than serious candidate.

Update: Lessig will not be participating in Tuesday's debate.  Strike-throughs above reflect that correction.

I personally will look to see if Clinton goes after Sanders on gun safety.  This could be the thing that turns Sanders' polling south, after his slow, methodical surge upward.  She could be judged the winner of the forum based on this issue alone, almost irrespective of any other one.  The Black Lives Matter incidents and concerns should draw the full scrutiny of each candidate, but I don't see them quite as pivotal at this time; that is, absent a protest during the debate.  This analysis assumes no obvious gaffes by her or anybody else, for that matter.  Update: More from Reverb Press, who reminds me that O'Malley has long touted his record on strict gun laws.

I can almost guarantee gun control will be a prime topic in the first primary debate on October 13. My prediction: O’Malley and Clinton will not hold back on berating Sanders about his relaxed position on gun control throughout his (political) tenure.

Finally, Clinton needs to take a position on the TPP now that it's back in the news.  If she doesn't, she'll pay a price for it.  Expect her to shilly-shally right up to the last minute, then come out against.

That rumbling you heard that started over the weekend wasn't just thunder.  Hillary Clinton's campaign finally seems to be coming together.

Update:  More on everything I wrote and a little more here.