The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance urges the people of Cleveland to stay strong as it brings you this week's blog post roundup.

Off the Kuff notes that even white people don't much like Donald Trump.

SocraticGadfly, using a simple tool on an NPR webpage, shows that Hillary Clinton doesn't need Green votes, unless to riff on band Rush, she's today's Tom Dewey.

Egberto Willies cogently observes that supporting police officers and Black Lives Matter activists are not mutually exclusive.

Asian American Action Fund picks a roster of 2017 fantasy Clinton cabinet members.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme does not celebrate Texas' miserable child well being ranking. Republicans don't like children.

A prediction PDiddie at Brains and Eggs made about the outcome of the SD-13 special election to replace Rodney Ellis was dead on.

The Lewisville Texan Journal reports that Army Corps of Engineers has chosen not to issue an environmental impact statement regarding the improvements being studied to the Lewisville Dam.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston laments the 19% of Latinos who have boarded the Trump Train.

Following the developments in the prosecution of Chris "Frack Master" Faulkner, Txsharon at Bluedaze posted the FBI's seizure of his Bentley and Aston Martin.

Neil at All People Have Value spoke to a longtime friend on the phone over the past week. Neil says longtime relationships add a great deal of meaning to life. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

The Houston Press sees Dan Patrick as the stand-in for Greg Abbott at "Trumpfest", the GOP convention opening this week.

Equality Texas advances the FairnessUSA spot that will air during the last night of the RNC depicting transgender discrimination, and has an extended version of it posted. 

Grits for Breakfast examines the reasons why more Texans are being shot by police, and also dissects that Harvard study purporting to show racial bias does not exist in police shootings.

Zachery Taylor sees the media perpetuating the divisions between law enforcement officers and Black Lives Matters.

Jay Blazek Crossley notes that in 2016, transportation decision-making bodies in the state of Texas continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by older white men.

Paul Woodruff ponders the ethical implications of using a robot to kill the Dallas sniper.

Juanita Jean wades into the Donald Trump-RBG war of words.

Kyle Shelton delves into the history of taking protest to the streets.

Somervell County Salon observed that the number of Glen Rose ISD student vaccination exemptions has nearly doubled over last year.

Kiko Martinez looks at Elena of Avalor, the first Latina princess from the Disney machine.

Lone Star Ma recommends a few books for people who would like to be less ignorant on racial matters.

Doyen Oyeniyi reminds the lieutenant governor that his words matter, too.

And Pages of Victory helped out a neighbor while she was on vacation.

Sunday Funnies

Hair Furor faceplants ahead of RNC

Brutal unforced errors going into Cleveland.

(Thursday night) there was chatter - half tongue-in-cheek but not totally - about whether Trump's decision to postpone his vice presidential announcement wasn't simply some gambit to gain advantage from the massacre in Nice but an effort to play for time and possibly back out of his apparent decision to place Mike Pence on the ticket. That couldn't possibly be true. Not really. But it's Trump. So who knows? Now of course we find out early this afternoon that it was true. [...]

(By Friday afternoon) there were already multiple reports from credible journalists that Trump was up late into Thursday night trying to find a way or find out if there was any way he could back out of his offer to put Pence on the ticket. Now, late in the evening there's this even more detailed version of events in the Times. Trump was some mix of miffed at the leaks, unimpressed by Pence, unable to let the other guys down easy and looking for some way out of the Pence box. He just couldn't find it. On its own terms, this turn of events perfectly captures the mix of unsteadiness, cynicism and derp that characterizes everything about the Trump campaign. But the bigger story isn't so much that it happened as that it was leaked, so quickly, and at such a devastating moment for Pence and the ticket. 

Quite unpresidential.  Somewhat worse than this ...

The last-minute plea for $6 million from Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson to rescue the Republican convention has erupted in controversy, as four of the five signatories to the letter from party organizers never saw it before it was sent and major donors flagged serious errors that forced the convention hosts to apologize to one of the GOP’s most influential financiers.

The episode has opened a window into a host committee that is scrambling and still millions shy of its fundraising target, only days before tens of thousands of Republicans arrive in Cleveland, as it acknowledges for the first time that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has put a damper on donations.

The letter, obtained by POLITICO on Thursday, outlined two dozen major corporations — Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Duke Energy and Apple, among them — that it claimed had backed out a combined more than $8.1 million in pledged donations in recent months.

But on Friday, Emily Lauer, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland 2016 host committee, acknowledged to POLITICO that the list of lost donors in the letter to Adelson was inaccurate — and that the committee has now reached out to Adelson’s aides to apologize.

I just don't understand why people think Trump is going to pull off an Electoral College upset ... unless they know Hillary Clinton better than me, and believe she is capable of screwing herself worse than this.  Which is certainly possible but increasingly unlikely.

Borris Miles or Senfronia Thompson for SD-13?

In a true 'lesser of two evils' matchup tomorrow morning at the CWA hall, I must confess that I'll be slightly less unhappy if Miz T prevails, but I don't think she will.  Unless there is a backlash against him that has flown under my radar, I expect to be calling my statehouse representative, Borris Miles, Senator.

Miles has been an extremely frustrating guy to support based on his -- 'erratic' is the kindest word I can use -- behavior since being elected to the Texas House.  He's hard to dislike personally, however.  Thompson has been, as the Chronic board noted in their fulsome endorsement, top-shelf as a legislator and a representative for her House district, but more of the people voting in this election live in Miles'.  And they love the guy, warts and all.

By the way, the Chron overlooked or ignored this unflattering NYT article from 2011 about Senfronia's skill at playing both sides, even when it comes to morally ambiguous issues.

My main question about this race centers around a projected whip count: the numbers of precinct chairs in HD 146 (Borris') versus HD 141 (Senfronia's) that are within SD-13's boundary lines.  I pulled the list from each House district's website and compared them to the Senate district's and counted 41 of Miles' and 18 of Thompson's.  Accounting for the fact that these chairs aren't necessarily sure things for their respective reps, that there are vacancies among the precincts, and that somebody's numbers -- mine or the state of Texas' -- might be off, Miles still likely has a 2-1 base vote lead over Thompson going into Saturday morning's election.

With 95 precinct chairs (or so) doing the electing -- and let's just say ten fewer than the 58 votes Miles is claiming -- he has enough to declare victory on the first ballot.  I do not think he'll win on a first ballot with four or five names on it, but he should prevail on the second.

That's my prediction; let's see how right or wrong I am.

RNC circus plans coming together

These elephants and clowns are going to be some kind of entertaining.

A night highlighting the tragedy in Benghazi, Libya. An appearance by onetime football star Tim Tebow. A presentation detailing former President Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct.

Donald J. Trump, the presumptive nominee, has been promising a different kind of Republican National Convention, and plans obtained by The New York Times show that he is eager to put his showbiz stamp on the party’s gathering, even as he struggles to attract A-list talent.

If there's not enough room on their TiVO to record the whole thing, maybe they'll offer a DVD for five hundred bucks or so, a contribution perk like PBS does.  Saul Relative to how much the rubes can get fleeced for.

The list, which is subject to change, as obtained by The New York Times:

Monday, July 18: A Benghazi focus, followed by border patrol agents and Jamiel Shaw Sr. (who became an outspoken advocate for tougher immigration laws after his son was killed in 2008 by an undocumented immigrant). Sen. Tom Cotton, Rudy Giuliani, Melania Trump, Sen. Joni Ernst and others.

Tuesday, July 19: A focus on the economy: Dana White, president of U.F.C., the professional fighting league; Asa Hutchinson, governor of Arkansas; Michael Mukasey, the former United States attorney general; Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a vice-presidential possibility; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell; Tiffany Trump and Donald Trump Jr.; and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Wednesday, July 20: Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (who tangled on television with the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper after the Orlando, Fla., nightclub massacre); Eileen Collins (the first woman to command a space shuttle mission); Newt Gingrich; Sen. Ted Cruz; Eric Trump; professional golfer Natalie Gulbis; and the nominee for vice president.

Thursday, July 21: Tebow; Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee; Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma; Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman; Gov. Rick Scott of Florida; Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel; Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a private-equity real estate investor; Ivanka Trump; and lastly the presidential nominee himself.

These are the prime-timers; the full list includes Speaker Paul Ryan, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, more senators and Congress critters, and B-list conservative celebrities such as Marcus Luttrell.

There is some news to be gleaned here.

(W)hat is striking, as much as who is on the list, is who is not. Several figures Mr. Trump had said he would invite to speak, like the boxing promoter Don King and Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, were not included. Neither was Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, a hugely popular figure in the key state of New Hampshire.

And this.

Even as they finalized the list this week, Mr. Trump’s campaign aides and party officials were also working behind the scenes to stave off any challenges to his nomination on the convention floor next week.

Yeah, that.  Stands as much chance of happening as Bernie Sanders being nominated by the Democrats.  The delusions really bloom in this heat, don't they?

(T)he chance that Mr. Trump’s opponents could muster enough support to deny him the nomination is remote. The biggest hazard that Mr. Trump and the leaders of the Republican National Committee are trying to contain is how messy the process could become — and how much damage his campaign could sustain.

Starting on Thursday morning, delegates will begin to debate a series of proposals to change the party’s rules. Those proposed changes could include a provision that would allow delegates to vote their consciences in selecting the Republican presidential nominee, instead of voting in accordance with the outcomes of the primaries and caucuses in their states, as most state party rules require.

If you're not too busy playing Pokemon Go, you might check your Twitter feed late morning and see if anything develops along these lines.  News might break, after all.

Seriously, though, about the convention.

The conventions used to be crucially significant news events, so the news media covers them extensively. A couple of hours’ worth of primetime speeches are on network television, and several hours more are shown on cable news channels.

Because the convention will be televised, lots of important politicians from around the country want to come speak at it. Because lots of important politicians will be there, lots of lobbyists and interest group leaders are there to stage events too. That further increases the convention’s appeal to the media, which find it to be a target-rich environment for interviews, and the extensive national media attention gives further incentives to political influencers, stars, and wannabes to show up.

The extensive media attention itself makes the conventions significant campaign events. In their book The Timeline of Presidential Elections: How Campaigns Do (and Do Not) Matter, Christopher Wlezien and Robert Erikson show that polling leads are considerably more predictive after conventions than before. Usually the party that holds its convention first gets a "bounce," and then the party that goes second gets its own "bounce." The net effect of those two convention bounces is a significant political event that meaningfully drives the outcome in November.

This is why you don't fret polling until the kids go back to school, folks.  Two things you should do in mid-to late August: slow down in school zones and start to give the polls more credibility.  Also see this; trust Nate Silver to let you know when it's time to freak out. 

All that said, the upshot of turning conventions into a week-long display of party unity is that they are pretty boring. Any one speech can be quite interesting on its own terms. But the vast majority of them simply blend together, recitations of the same key beats over and over and over again in slightly different tones of voice.

This is what makes the idea of a Donald Trump convention so exciting.

For one thing, many of the key party luminaries whom you’d normally expect to be featured speakers aren’t supporting him. Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush won’t be speaking. Neither Ted Cruz nor John Kasich has endorsed Trump yet, so we won’t have that party unity display either. A huge raft of GOP elected officials are skipping the convention, and it’s not entirely obvious that a young up-and-coming Republican politician really wants to keynote this event.

At the same time, while Trump has no real knowledge of or interest in American public policy, he does have extensive experience in the field of reality television.

Normally parties nominate a presidential candidate with the opposite portfolio of skills (Ronald Reagan had demonstrated proficiency in both policy and Hollywood), which is probably wise from a governing standpoint but has led us to a dreary dead end in terms of conventions. By the same token, while Trump would likely be a disastrous president he could be an excellent convention organizer.

Since modern conventions are essentially just long television shows with no real political content, it seems natural that politicians would stage boring ones while the star of NBC’s The Apprentice could stage an amazing one.

If he pulls it off, the Dems will once again clutch their pearls and faint.  For the price of that entertainment value, I'm counting on it.

Revolution News, Vol. 9: change of venue

Father's Day was the most recent of these, so we're overdue for an update.

After the pair appeared at the joint rally, the Guardian asked Sanders supporters: what now?

We received 375 responses on readers’ plans for their November vote. And despite the show of solidarity with Clinton on Tuesday, Sanders’ fans aren’t all convinced the presumptive Democratic nominee is who they will now support: Green party nominee Jill Stein was the most popular among reader respondents, with 171 new supporters, more than double the number who said they would move their support to Clinton.

A write-in vote for Sanders was also a popular option, with just 20 respondents opting for Trump. These results aren’t necessarily a representative sample, and they differ significantly from a Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday, which found that 85% of Sanders supporters intended to vote for Clinton.

 

How Bernie Sanders supporters plan to vote in November

Source: Guardian | Graphic: Jan Diehm/The Guardian

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171/375 = 45.6%, so this anecdotal survey indeed produces a wildly different result from Pew's recent scientific poll, also referenced yesterday in an update and linked via The Guardian in the third graf above.  What to make of such a vast discrepancy?  What you like.  For now, it's just another data point.

"Donations to Stein campaign increase exponentially":

Since Tuesday morning, the Green Party has received over $80,000 in contributions, over half of which comes from first-time donors, and half of which comes in the form of contributions under $50. Tellingly, about 615 of those contributions totalled $27, the exact number commonly trumpeted and solicited by the Sanders campaign during his revolutionary grassroots funding movement.

“There’s been an explosion of Berners coming in through every portal of the campaign, and it’s really exciting,” Stein told US Uncut in a phone interview. “There is so much courage out there to stand up to the marching orders handed down by the usual suspects.”

Stein’s social media accounts have also seen tremendous growth and engagement in the past 24 hours. A recent livestream posted to the Stein campaign’s Facebook page has been viewed over 300,000 times in less than a day. Her page itself has added approximately 44,000 new likes in the past week. Her Twitter account has over 145,000 followers as of this writing, increasing by the tens of thousands just this week, with 5.6 million impressions on July 12-13 alone. There have also been 10,000 new signups for her email list since yesterday.

And according to web traffic ranking site Alexa, Jill2016.com has been climbing steadily in popularity since January, with rapid monthly growth since March. The search term “Jill Stein” has also seen a hockey-stick increase on Google Trends since the endorsement:

Duopolists will scoff at the $80K figure, but will probably be swallowing a little harder the next time they look at a quarterly campaign finance report.  The ultimate goal for the next 60 days or so remains; 15% in the national polling, leading to Stein's inclusion in the presidential debates, the schedule for which was announced this week (the first is slated for September 26).  In order to be in the debates, her name needs to be included in the polls.  Time is short.  You may petition the Commission on Presidential Debates for redress of this grievance at this site.

According to Stein’s website, her campaign has secured ballot access in 23 states and Washington, DC, and petition signatures are currently being collected for ballot access in 27 others. Stein said her campaign has “many irons in the fire” and will be on “90 to 95 percent” of ballots after petitions are delivered to various Secretaries of State.

In the end, despite being labeled as a “spoiler” candidate by Clinton supporters and staunch Democrats in a winner-take-all political system, Stein is optimistic about her chances if she’s able to communicate her message to a national TV audience at the general election debates.

[...]

“If that word gets out, that can be a very powerful motivator for those people to vote for my campaign, and that’s a plurality of votes.” Stein continued. “In the words of Alice Walker, ‘The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.'”

I can't say I'm overjoyed about HA Goodman's conversion, but here it is (apply the blind hogs and acorns rationale).

Fear is the ultimate weapon of establishment Democrats and people who want nothing more than for you to “fall in line.”

I’ll admire and respect Bernie Sanders forever, but I’ll never “fall in line” and vote for anyone advised by Henry Kissinger, or Bush’s neoconservatives. As Robert Kagan stated regarding Clinton’s foreign policy, “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue…it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

Sorry, not voting for a Democrat with a “neocon” foreign policy.

Give Jill Stein a look, and give her platform serious consideration. Around half of Bernie voters according to Bloomberg in late June will never vote for Hillary; a far more accurate assessment in my view than recent claims of the majority flocking to Clinton.

Whatever the percentage of conversions happens to be, there's some serious momentum now for Stein, and one of many Berning Questions is how far can she take it.

Two out of three ain't bad

-- My timing was a few days off on Trump and Pence teaming up -- Il Douche whiffed by missing the chance to steal the news cycle yesterday from Hillary and Bernie -- but it looks as if I'll be right by Friday.  Pence, fresh from the tanning bed, delivered the line that will be repeated on an endless loop from now until the leaves fall off the trees.

"I think it would be extremely careless to elect Hillary Clinton as the next president of the United States."

Let's observe that the Sheldon Primary has elected Newt Gingrich the vice-presidential nominee, so I'll surmise that's the last obstacle for the Orange-utan to overcome, thus the delay.

Some donors are pressuring Trump to pick Gingrich. A source close to Sheldon Adelson tells CNN that the casino magnate spoke to Trump and mentioned that "he liked Newt."

"Favoring is a more appropriate term," the source said of Adelson's conversation with Trump.

I do like my oligarchy with a skosh of plutocracy.

Update: This impulsive, unfortunate, regrettable insertion of herself into the election has me shaking my head at Justice RBG.  The crack about moving to New Zealand reveals her own unfounded fears of a Trump presidency.  Of all the people in the United States who are capable of relocating across the planet who will never actually do so (she's got one of the best jobs there is, and it's for life), Ruth Bader Ginsberg is signaling that she needs a Xanax and a glass of wine.  And somebody who can persuade her to stay away from picking fights with Drumpf.

Update II: Election Law Blog's Rick Hasen agrees.

With respect to recent polling, the swing states are closing up but there's no reason for worry.  This is predictable erosion from last week's non-indictment.  Trump is about to pick his running mate, the RNC is coming up, he's going to get some more bounces, maybe even move ahead of Clinton in the polling next week and almost certainly the week after.  That's how the presidential cycle goes; it happened in '08 right after McCain picked Palin.  He pulled into the lead.  Briefly.

I'll be blogging about the pants-crapping Democrats making themselves physically ill with worry about President Trump in the third and fourth weeks of this month, in-between conventions.  I'll link and mock every one.

There's nothing here to be concerned with, Nellies.  Yet.

-- The New Yorker's John Cassidy called Bernie's endorsement of Hillary 'fulsome'.  We're not actually as strong together as Mrs. Clinton's campaign is projecting.

There was that phrase again. Perhaps nobody had informed Clinton that “Stronger Together” echoes the slogan of the Remain side, which lost the recent Brexit referendum in the U.K. Or perhaps she didn’t care. With Sanders behind her and on message, one of the big challenges facing her campaign had been overcome. Now the task was to make sure that Sanders’s supporters received the message, even if that meant laying it on thick.

Berners showed up at the New Hampshire rally and left amid shouts of 'No!" and tears as Bernie choked the life out of his own political revolution.  It's going to be some time before these believers can reconcile their grief.  Today I would posit that of the choices left to them, not voting at all might be in the lead.  But then there's this, which suggests that most of the sheep are already herding themselves onto the bandwagon.

The financial markets, on the other hand, were much more enthusiastic.  They've been quickly shaking off Brexit -- that's another one I missed -- and rose to all-time highs in the days preceding yesterday, rising higher as the two Democrats spoke effusively of each other.  Oil is still losing ground on oversupply reports, however, so Houston's economy and conservatives will remain fearful about the future.

And speaking of ham-handed sales jobs, Barack Obama is also mistaken if he thinks we're not as divided as it seems.  We are in fact more so.   Be reminded that Obama lives in the same White House bubble that a clearly and publicly intoxicated George W. Bush (embarrassing himself once more) used to live in.



As for the outgoing chief executive, I seem to be immune to his silver-tongued entreaties at these final stages of his public service.  For the incoming one, it's a matter of not getting it and not caring to, and her husband -- his rapidly deteriorating political dexterity failing him -- seems too feeble to give her an assist.  In fact, he looks like that guy in the park with early-onset dementia, feeding the pigeons and trying to decide whether he should fill up his Always or wind his wristwatch.

Hey, I just thought of something: in order to deal with the crisis of ISIS, let's join them and transform them from within.  It certainly makes as much sense as Texas Democrats voting in the GOP primary, doesn't it?

-- Saving the most ignorant and deceptive for last ... Paul Ryan.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan defended his decision to support Donald Trump Tuesday, disagreeing with the candidate on several issues but saying that refusing to back Trump amounts to supporting Hillary Clinton.

"It's a binary choice," Ryan told a skeptical voter at a CNN town hall Tuesday. "It is either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton — you don't get a third option. It's one or the other and I know where I want to go." 

Fingers in the third-party dikes, fingers in his ears.  The concept of a hell that burns everlasting was conceived in the minds of men who had to confront the demagoguery of charlatans like Ryan.

After a voter told Ryan he couldn't vote for Trump over what he called racism, Ryan responded: "That basically means you're going to help elect Hillary Clinton. And I don't think Hillary Clinton is going to support any of the things that you stand for if you're a Republican." 

Based on nearly every single post I have published for the past twelve months, it shouldn't surprise you that I can see right through the Speaker.  If you're falling for this line, then you will surely get no relief from your terror if you vote for Trump because you despise Hillary.  And vice versa.

No point in waking Ryan up with the smell of coffee brewing; he's not going to flinch if you threw a whole pot of it, boiling hot, in his face.

Don't be as stupid as Paul Ryan thinks you are.  Please.

-- Steven Colbert isn't joking when he says that Clinton is such a bad candidate that the only person she could defeat is Donald Trump.  She's one and done.  Whether she cracks the top five of worst presidents ever is in her hands.  She starts another war, she can probably knock out Calvin Coolidge for fifth place.

"Meh."

Seems like the reaction in aggregate.

-- The 'pro' or Clinton argument, from Nate Silver's shop.

Roughly 1 in 5 Sanders supporters say they are going to vote for a third-party candidate. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein combined for 22 percent of the vote among Sanders’s supporters in a recent NBC/WSJ survey and 21 percent in a recent Suffolk University survey. Johnson won 17 percent of Sanders backers in a Pew Research Center poll (the poll did not test Stein). The average third-party support among Sanders’s voters in the three surveys, 20 percent, is significantly higher than the 13 percent of all voters who say they’d back Johnson or Stein. (Younger voters, who voted for Sanders in overwhelming numbers in the primary, are also far more likely to say they’d choose a third-party option or “someone else,” according to these surveys and a new poll from the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.)

Keep in mind that historically, third-party candidates -- even those down the ballot in Texas -- can poll well running up to Election Day, but then fear takes hold and they leak that support back to the majors.  So how this trend holds is one I'll be watching closely.  Harry Enten again at 538.com.

But it’s also possible (and, I would argue, probable) that because Clinton and Trump are two of the most disliked presidential candidates of all time, third-party candidates are going to do better than usual. Johnson looks especially likely to peel votes from Clinton and Trump because he will probably achieve ballot access in all 50 states, which is unusual for a non-major-party candidate.

That’s part of the reason why FiveThirtyEight is including Johnson’s chances in these projections. We aren’t explicitly projecting Stein’s vote, in part because polls include her less often than they include Johnson, and in part because she probably won’t be on the ballot in some states. You’ll notice, however, that the projected vote shares for Clinton, Trump and Johnson usually don’t add up to 100 percent. (In Missouri, for instance, they sum to 98.7 percent.) That’s because the model reserves a small share for “other” candidates, including Stein, in states where we expect at least one of them to appear on the ballot.

(This is what Charles did back here -- scroll to the bottom -- and is an acceptable rounding method among pollsters and political scientists.)

-- The 'con' argument: Trump, Johnson and Stein all took today as the start of the campaign to begin wooing Sandernistas to their side.  It's downhill for Clinton from here, in two interpretations; one good and one bad.  Can she ride her sled all the way down without getting upset?  It's up to her now.  No excuses.

-- The satire.

The Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign announced plans for bumper stickers and t-shirts emblazoned with their candidate’s new slogan, “Meh.”

The slogan change comes on the heels of Ms. Clinton winning the endorsement of her fiercest and most stalwart Democratic primary challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Several Clinton camp staffers have told the press the slogan is meant to capitalize on the general feeling of apathy that they hope Sanders supporters will now feel toward the election, and that it will inspire them to accept the status quo as a “perfectly acceptable alternative to substantive change,” one aide told a newspaper in New Jersey.

The campaign also considered, “She Could Be Worse” and “Frankly, She’s Not Trump” as well as “She’ll Disappoint You Just The Same As Obama Did.” Other slogans that could still be unveiled by Team Clinton are, “She’s Like Bernie, For Now, Until She’s Not,” and “I Like Triangulating, Cynical Politicians Like Hillary!” Focus groups reportedly also tested well with the slogan, “I’ll Vote For Another Clinton In 20 Years Because Change Is Hard!”

“We understand that familial political dynasties are kind of the exact opposite of what the Founders probably had in mind,” Helen Sussman, Chief Deputy Assistant Media Liaison for the Clinton campaign, told reporters this morning, “but well, YOLO! Also, we have to just keep reminding you, she’s not Trump. And any time you feel sad about being force fed a milquetoast status quo sellout tool of the One Percent, just remember — she’s not Trump.”

Don't forget to mention the words 'spoiler' or Supreme Court' a few times either, like Bernie has repeatedly.  'First woman president', 'Ralph Nader' and 'siphoning votes' also still work well on the shallowest of thinkers.

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

I read the news today, oh boy

-- Hillary and Bernie will make a joint campaign appearance in New Hampshire.  Some are refusing to use the 'E' word, which is almost the most pathetic thing I have seen this cycle.  Some on the left -- the real actual left -- think the Democrats are pulling their act together.  Some don't.  I don't care either way.

The only question is what his support network does.

This news, to me, is what the Democratic Party is, was, and always will be.  A conservative Democrat (head of the DLC, founder of 'The New Democrats') leaves his party in the lurch by jumping out of the race for US Senate ahead of the 2010 Red Tea Tidal Wave, now wants his old job back after making millions as a lobbyist.  No. Thanks.

-- Some people are already feeling very threatened (on behalf of Hillary Clinton) by Jill Stein and the Green Party.  They really went the extra mile on the loathing part, too.

You know the old saw: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you ...

For the rest of the weak-kneed: Bernie is endorsing Clinton today, even if he cannot say so.  Unbunch your briefs, take a deep breath, resume more superior condescension.  You've got a real enemy, and it's standing to your right.  Your other right.

-- Trump will try to Bigfoot Clinton and Sanders by tapping his running mate, also later today.  The names most frequently mentioned have been Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, and some retired general.

Doesn't matter; this is going to be a blowout.  Though if Pence is the choice, then Indiana should be fun to watch, like Ohio.

-- Obama, W. Bush, Biden, their wives, Ted Cruz, John Cornyn and some other Texas electeds in trouble with the law are in Dallas today for, you know, thoughts and prayers.  Greg Abbott spilled hot water on himself, so he's not coming.  Sending his wife.  I'll try to avoid every mention of this on social media today as well as in the future.

I think the one-year anniversary of Sandra Bland's arrest is a much more important occasion.  In that vein, I expect to see this win a Pulitzer:

Those cops dressed like that look like a fucking joke.

If you'd rather read about Pokemon Go taking over the world, or Amazon Prime Day, or anything like that then your news is elsewhere.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance mourns the Dallas Police Department's losses at a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest, and continues to support constructive solutions for our country's ongoing racial issues.  Here's the blog post roundup.

Off the Kuff notes some interesting aspects of national polls and how they relate to Texas.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos urges Democratic candidates to run as Democrats. Neo-liberalism and Republican-lite are not winnable options. A Gentle Reminder to Texas Democrats: Neoliberalism is not a winning solution.

The Texas Republican in charge of social services (isn't that a joke) shows the typical Republican disdain for women, their families and their health by offering mosquito repellent to fight off the Zika virus. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is disgusted.

July is presidential nominating conventions month and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has the lowdown on the Republicans, Democrats, and Greens (coming to Houston in August).

SocraticGadfly advises environmentalists not to get fooled by Exxon's head fakes on a carbon tax.

Texas Leftist speculates on Trump's brand of terror.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston recaps the Texas Department of Insurance's hearing on arbitration.

Asian American Action Fund writes about religion's impact on the 2016 election.

Egberto Willies had to call out a friend who has turned toward Trump.

The Lewisville Texan Journal takes note of the city's Animal Services event in coordination with the showing of "The Secret Life of Pets".

Neil at All People Have Value walked in the Sharpstown neighborhood of Houston with his sign regarding the value of everyday life. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

Better Texas Blog begins prep work for the 2017 budget process, Erika Greider at Burkablog forewarns the 2017 Texas Legislature about the looming budget battles, and Eva DeLuna Castro places the blame for Texas' tightened budget where it belongs.

Juliet Stipech and Norma Torres Mendoza argue that comprehensive immigration reform is a matter of the United States’' continued economic prosperity.

Grits for Breakfast blogs about the Dallas police shootings as "changing everything"... or nothing.

Jim Hightower posits on police violence, Black Lives Matter, and populism.

Ashton Woods at Safety in Numbers tells Pride Houston they still have a problem.

The TSTA Blog applauds Hillary Clinton's promise to reduce the role of standardized testing in public schools.

Prairie Weather wants to know if Hillary is really in the clear.

Ty Clevenger at Lawflog points out that Clinton isn't the only person in government protected by a double standard.

Zachery Taylor compares Joe Biden's 'Cancer Moonshot' to Al Gore's claims of having invented the Internet.

The Rag Blog posts details about its 50th anniversary Rag Reunion and Celebration in the fall.

TX election law decisions on voter ID, redistricting coming

Election Law Blog's Rick Hasen:

The federal challenge to Texas’s strict voter identification law is pending before the entire Fifth Circuit sitting en banc.  The Supreme Court set a soft July 20 deadline for a decision—after that the Court has invited plaintiffs to seek immediate relief for this election before the Supreme Court. There’s nothing technically binding about that date, but I expect we will see a decision by then from the Fifth Circuit, and then, whatever happens, I expect an emergency motion to the Supreme Court for whichever side loses.

Meanwhile, the never ending federal district court challenge to Texas’s redistricting remains pending in San Antonio, with a delay that at this point is as inexplicable as it is inexcusable. That case, when decided, will be on a fast-track appeal to the Supreme Court as well, but with any ruling relevant only for elections after 2016.

We are also waiting for other decisions, and one of those big ones is the appeal to the Fourth Circuit of North Carolina’s strict voting laws. That one, too, will likely end up with a request for emergency relief from SCOTUS.

Hasen has predicted that Fifth en banc will deny the photo ID appeal, sending the case on to the Supremes, where a ruling might not come until after November's election, as the court has adjourned for the summer and probably won't render a verdict until long after the first Monday in October.  Even an immediate judgment once the Court reconvenes would be very close to the start of early voting (although the change consists of not asking for ID, so your local election judges ought to easily re-adapt to the way Texas conducted elections for hundreds of years previously).  Worse, a 4-4 tie would remand back to the Fifth's decision.  So the case might have its best chance if it is stalled until there's a ninth justice.

Redistricting is going to wait for 2018, soonest, if it is struck down.

The North Carolina case might also beat Veazey v. Abbott to the Eight (or Nine, depending on how quickly Merrick Garland gets confirmed after a historic delay), and could be the precedent-setter in that event.

So more waiting, but potentially some progress as well.

*Post updated for clarity throughout

Sunday Above The Law Funnies

Nobody could have expected an attack on police

Especially not in Texas, after all.  Right?

Downtown Dallas was in lockdown early Friday after snipers shot 11 officers, five fatally, during a protest over deadly police shootings of black men elsewhere.

Three people were in custody and a fourth suspect exchanged gunfire with authorities in a parking garage at El Centro Community College into the morning, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said.

NBC Dallas Fort-Worth reported the fourth suspect had been "neutralized" at around 2:45 a.m. (3:45 ET). Earlier, he had told police negotiators that "the end is coming" and that "there are bombs all over the place in this garage and downtown," Brown said.

Extensive sweeps of downtown for explosives were carried out and the FAA ordered a temporary flight restriction over the city.

It was the deadliest day for law enforcement since 9/11.

I suppose I could be cited for instigating something with an inflammatory blog posting (good thing nobody reads this blog) but the law probably has more important people to hunt down.  The truth, as everyone who's been paying attention knows, is that LEO is bringing this sort of thing upon themselves by refusing to police the criminals within their own ranks.

As my social media fills up with various hashtags starting with the words, "Pray for", we have to once again point out to the legally blind that perhaps God isn't going to be of much help in this (or any other) regard.  This is a people problem, and only people can work it out.

Here's another prediction: I expect more violence from both sides, even though only one will be publicly denounced and appealed to for calm.

As the chant goes: "No justice, no peace".

Update: The NY Post is just telling the truth.

Sorry if it makes you feel uncomfortable.  There's a lot more discomfort coming down the pike.

Update II:

So you have, every 28 hours, a person of color, usually a poor person of color, being killed with lethal force — and, of course, in most of these cases they are unarmed. So people march in the streets and people protest; and yet the killings don’t stop. Even when they are captured on video. I mean we have videos of people being murdered by the police and the police walk away. This is symptomatic of a state that is ossified and can no longer respond rationally to what is happening to the citizenry, because it exclusively serves the interest of corporate power.

-- Chris Hedges, a month ago

You better go read it.  He's much better at predictions than me.

The toons that didn't make the cut

For the last post.

Scattershooting conventions and vice-presidential nominees

But not black men.  Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are the names of the latest victims in a continuing national tragedy.  The police aren't reforming themselves, so someone is going to have assist them.  When order is more important than justice, then disorder is compelled.  And I sure hope nobody is stupid enough to put me on a terrorist watchlist for making a simple observation.

Because that would indicate that the police state is farther along than even I suspected.  It would suggest that we are moving closer to the Israeli model, in fact.

In lighter fare ...

-- The corporations want to do the two major party conventions on the down-low.

(M)any special interests, from Comcast Corp. to financial giant JPMorgan Chase to insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield, will participate in convention-related activities, but they’ve become more creative in how they influence conventioneers — or are altogether refusing to discuss their convention plans.

“They want to show up, they want to rub elbows with everyone at the conventions, they just don’t want the corporate name out there,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for advocacy group Public Citizen, who has long tracked influence efforts at the conventions. “They’ll be looking for lower-key ways of doing the same thing they’ve always done.”

-- And let's update here instead of there that Mike Pence has moved into the lead in the GOP veepstakes.  Marc Belisle at Reverb Press is searingly on point.

Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie have egos and ambitions at least as great as Trump’s. The businessman may appreciate their input on the campaign trail, but the possibility of a right hand man who could eclipse him politically would be too much for the insecure narcissist. Besides, both Gingrich and Christie are too savvy to want to be sidelined in the VP spot. Gingrich is probably angling for something like Chief of Staff. And for the sake of irony, let’s say Christie is gunning for Secretary of Transportation. If Trump loses in November, they can say they were just advisers and Trump didn’t follow their advice. If nothing else, they glide into a 7-figure lobbyist gig.

Pence, on the other hand, has little to lose, since he’s in trouble in his reelection bid in his home state. He’s the kind of man Trump could have in his pocket, since he would owe his political life to the New York businessman. Pence could help Trump in the Upper Midwest, which is where the Republican candidate needs to win to have any chance in the Electoral College. Pence would also help Trump woo evangelical voters, a key Republican voting bloc that Trump has had difficulty connecting with. Finally, if they get to the White House, Pence can work his contacts in Congress, especially the House, since he served there for 12 years, including a 2-year stint as Chairman of the House Republican Conference.

A Pence nomination would open Trump up to attacks on the governor’s record of forcing far right religious legislation on his state while ignoring its serious problems. But that itself could bring the evangelicals on board. This is the kind of match that Christie, Gingrich and adviser Paul Manafort would likely push Trump to make. If the Republican presidential candidate were a wiser, less petty politician, he might choose a running mate like New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, who would address a lot of his electoral problems. But he aggressively alienated her. His options are narrowing. Trump and Pence are drawn to each other for complex reasons. With time running short before the convention, and a bruising general ahead, Pence might be the best Trump can do now, if he’s acting rationally enough to make that decision.

The most difficult thing for Drumpf to do is take advice -- aka cautions, warnings, etc. -- from other people, those who know more about something than he does.  He's never lived his life that way.  Pence as VP would be a master stroke because the Indiana governor is the same kind of Teabagging extremist that Cheeto Jesus is without the bombast.  A formidable ticket it would be.

-- And to that end, it's always useful to take stock of what the conservative teevee talking heads are saying.  Mark Halperin, my go-to guy when I want a shitty-ass politico's insights that I never would have considered.

Among other things, Trump doubled down on his praise for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, expressed regret for deleting an anti-Semitic meme circulated by white supremacists, and announced that he wants convicted murderer Don King to speak at this month’s Republican convention.

Any normal person who watched the speech thought it was a train full of flaming dumpsters crashing into a dumping ground for nuclear waste.

As Trevor Noah said, "the week Hillary Clinton narrowly avoided indictment was a bad week to praise Saddam Hussein".  (As if there was ever a good one.)

“Morning Joe,” however, wondered if it was an indication that Trump was “getting his groove back.” Frequent guest Mark Halperin seemed to think the answer was, “Yes!”

“There’s no conventional political consultant in either party who would have approved that speech,” Halperin acknowledged before gearing up to praise Trump. “But… if he’s going to win, it’s going to be with that, with vintage Trump, where he not just energizes people, but also confident, also entertaining, and also with an ability to convey to people that he’s different. That he’s not going to be politically correct or business as usual.”

Halperin also predicted that if Trump kept making speeches like this — along with picking a good running mate, having a good convention and winning the first debate against Hillary Clinton — he’d “go ahead in the polls.”

I got nothing, except a little gnawing feeling he might be right.

-- I won't belabor the Clinton email matter much after today, but this needs to be documented.  The intent or mens rea determination that prosecutors make when faced with a close call on a target's crimes -- or lack thereof -- isn't based on probable guilt but the odds of conviction.  Prosecutorial discretion is essentially an 'is this worth my time and effort' query.  This turns out to be one of the core pillars of our criminal justice system.  If it looks like it's crumbling to you, as it does to me, we might both be accurate in our assessment.

The Clintons -- both of them -- repeatedly exercise unethical judgment because they calculate their odds of getting away with it as very good because of who they are.  This is also part of the same sense of entitlement or whatever you'd like to call it.  That they do get away with it most clearly shows that there is one justice system for some people -- call them 1% -- and one for the rest of us.  It shouldn't escape you that it's mostly wealthy white people at the top and poor black people at the bottom.

What it is not, as everyone knows, is justice.  It is -- or should be -- sufficient grounds for revolution, peaceful and political.  Or otherwise if it is necessary.  How necessary you deem revolution to be is also a question of how much do you have to lose or gain by it.

Keep in mind that a President Trump represents revolution to some, no matter how flawed, bigoted, or ignorant their logic may be in arriving at that conclusion.

-- More Trevor Noah: if the choices are "Grandma Nixon or a traffic cone soaked in raw sewage… maybe you shouldn’t have an election."

You have other choices, Trevor.  It's not either/or, more evil/less evil.  You don't have to choose between eating shit or drinking piss.  Stop thinking in binary.

Presidential nominating conventions month (#SeeYouInHouston)

It's that time of the quadrennial, with the GOP up first in two weeks -- the most interesting things will, as usual, be happening outside the Cleveland convention hall -- the Democrats following suit the week after in Philly, where the Berners will stage their last stand, and the GPUS right here in H-Town ("Houston, We Have a Solution!") the first weekend of August.  The Libertarians went first, in late May and in Orlando, nominating Johnson-Weld as their standard bearers, which earned them a CNN-televised town hall.

-- Trump is expected to tap a running mate as soon as next week, Clinton is finishing up the vetting process for her finalists, and Jill Stein is holding the door open for Bernie Sanders.  My suggestions (not quite predictions) are Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa for the Orange-utan, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia for Hillary, and former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich for Stein.  Note that each of these brings gender balance to their respective tickets along with some swing state influence, making them the most, err, pragmatic selections for their parties.

Update: Ernst really doesn't want the job and neither does Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, though the latter suggested Drumpf tap his daughter, Ivanka.  (Seriously, he did.)  So I suppose that leaves Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie.

-- I'll be assisting the GPUS team with social media during their convention.  You still have time to register to attend, secure lodging, and purchase meals in advance.  Here's the current list of workshops, with more on the way.

-- Charles has a good and even-handed post up about the latest in the Texas presidential developments and polling.  The remaining news to break that may move things one way or the other, besides the running mate picks, include:

• How FBI director James Comey's scalding condemnation/non-recommendation of prosecution of Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified email is being received by the electorate at large;
• Whether Drumpf can correct course with regard to Republican establishment acceptance, raise some money, or otherwise act like a serious presidential candidate;
• What Bernie Sanders is going to do; join the parade, stand and watch but not cheer, or get out and go Green.  This one seems easy to predict for me: he wants to be a Senate committee chairman in a Democratically-controlled upper chamber, so he's going to play along with the Dems but to some watered-down degree, managing to infuriate Clinton's base and his own at the same time.

-- It's never too late to call for opening the presidential debates to third party candidates.