Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Still nothing for her to worry about

Most of the Democrats I visited with over the weekend are finally starting to relax a little now that the horse-race polls are coming into alignment with the Electoral College projections.


-- This fellow (with lots of good analysis) has it Clinton 323-Trump 197, 18 EC votes tossup.  And a 99.6% probability of her winning the election.

-- These folks also see a landslide.


Note that AZ is turning blue in their scenario but NV is not.

-- Nate Silver's bunch, who'd been running a little on the conservative side this cycle after getting Berned in Michigan, shows the largest spread, with 365-172.7 and one electoral vote to Gary Johnson.   "Only" an 87.5% probability for Madam President.

-- Larry Sabato with the same conclusion, and 347-191.


Given these numbers you might think that future Daily Jackass and AmericaFUCKYEAHblogger John Aravosis would be chill, but he's not.  I booted him off the blogroll here months ago -- maybe even before Ted -- for his Clinton shilling and attacks on Bernie Sanders, which immediately transferred to Jill Stein.  With these fresh Red scares he's really going to have a lot of blood on his hands if/when Hillary bombs Iran, starts a new war -- hot, cold, or "just right" -- with Russia, or simply continues the Obama bombing campaign, now in four countries but nowhere on your teevee.

Coming up: a few fresh Daily Jackasses and some updates to old ones.

Monday, August 08, 2016

The Weekly Wrangle


The Texas Progressive Alliance is feeling the Olympic nationalist spirit as it brings you this week's roundup of the best of the left of the Lone Stars from last week.

Off the Kuff is pleased by the changes to voter ID requirements that were agreed to last week.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme, like the US Hispanic Congressional Caucus, is disgusted with the CEO of IBC bank doing business in South Texas while supporting Donald Trump.

Taking into account both real and hypothetical options, SocraticGadfly uses ranked choice voting to explain how he would vote, or like to vote, in this year's presidential election.

The Green Party's presidential nominating convention in Houston kept PDiddie at Brains and Eggs busy most of the week.  There's a CNN town hall scheduled for next week for the Jill Stein-Ajamu Baraka ticket.

Texas Leftist also blogged about the Greens' convention at U of H.

Texas Vox takes note of the US Dept. of Energy's attempts to restart the federal high-level radioactive waste program, this time in Texas.

Neil at All People Have Value walked on Houston's fabulous Airline Drive with a sign regarding the need for respect for all people.  APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston asks whether you should trust Donald Trump with your children.

Dos Centavos has another Tejano music review of Veronique and her latest, Mi Año Dorado.

And the Lewisville Texan Journal celebrates their first year as a print medium.

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

More scattershots from Texas bloggers and writers!

Zachery Taylor saw the DNC's war demagoguery as an extension of his indoctrination research.

TFN Insider has the latest from Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, a prominent Trump supporter who's spent the last two weeks "debunking" the theory of evolution.

Grits for Breakfast cited a Houston Press story where the representative for the Harris County sheriff blamed inmates for the jail's preventable, antibiotic-resistant diseases.

Ashton Woods at Strength in Numbers calls for Harris County DA Devon Anderson to step down.

Make West Texas Great Again reports on the first-ever agriculture forum in Lubbock, organized by Ted Cruz after he was criticized for inaction by Breitbart Texas.

The Texas Observer's sixteenth 'Texas Miracle' podcast speculates about the Dallas GOP's disarray and its effect on the Texas Republican Party in general.

The TSTA Blog sees through the latest school finance "reform" idea.

Pamela Coloff's 2006 story on the UT Tower shooting received a lot of attention on the 50th anniversary of that horrible day.

Better Texas Blog explains how Texas can support kinship caregivers.

Dan Wallach contemplates election security as national security.

The Texas Living Waters Project argues that desalination could harm Texas' bays.

Juanita Jean is seeking support for Glen Maxey's ballot by mail program.

Eileen Smith keeps trying to make sense of Donald Trump.

Somervell County Salon passes along the news about the multi-county feral hog program at the county expo.

And Pages of Victory reminds Democrats that Republicans are still plenty strong.

Sunday, August 07, 2016

The Daily Jackass: Voting third party is just like sending 'thoughts and prayers'



Congratulations, Jef Rouner of Free Press Houston.

Every four years we get together and play American President Idol, electing either a Republican or a Democrat. And, every four years this is when some fringe kook or two tries to tell us about all those parties outside the system, man. The ones who are really woke, as my white ass should probably not be saying, and aren’t corrupt by Big Scaryword.

See, Noah Horwitz, this is how you move to the head of the class.  Note that a clear path could involve going "anti-vaxxer" a full week after that smear has been debunked.  If you truck in lies that have been demonstrated to be lies, you're a pretty big Jackass.  But this is Rouner's moment; let's allow him to revel in it.

Between the carnival of carnage that was the Republican primary choosing the form of Gozer the Destructor and the bitter hold out of Bernie Sanders to the end of the Democratic one, emotions on both sides got a little high. I’ve never seen so much announcing that people were voting third party, and every single bit of it is as bloody useless as the Republicans offering their thoughts and prayers to the victims of the mass shooting (does it really matter which one I name?).

[...]

Which is why voting third party is mostly an empty gesture meant to telegraph a person’s own virtue without actually involving real work. If Stein really wanted to do some progressive good or even pass her bonkers woo ideas, she’d be a Democrat or at least an Independent who works with Democrats like Sanders. If Johnson actually cared about letting you smoke weed hassle-free, he should have done something about it when he was a Republican in actual power.

I was a Democrat who worked for ten years attempting to to pull the Texas Democratic Party to the left.  I wasn't alone; the Progressive Populist Caucus was, in 2006, the largest in the TDP, with several hundred members.  You have perhaps noted over the past decade how successful we were.

There's a better analogy if your intention was to crack on both progressives and religious extremists simultaneously: "the best way to make change for the better in ISIS is to join them and transform the organization from within".  Not ludicrous at all, is it?

Nothing Stein or Johnson say matters. At all. Their platforms are meaningless because neither of them will ever be called to do any of it or have to answer for the promises that they made to voters. Theirs is a consequence-free existence. Politifact is never going to check them on the Johnsonmeter or the Steinmeter like they did for Barack Obama and will certainly do to whoever wins this long-ass trudge to the future of the country.

Actually what they say and do does matter, as history has demonstrated.  Where do you think all this "spoiler" nonsense comes from?  It's that sort of progress that duopolists fear.  Even Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton's not-so-useful idiot, fell for the 'spoiler' BS right from the beginning of his campaign.  See, you can't really spoil an election that's already spoiled.

More importantly, the two major parties often co-opt the messages of the minor parties (Tea Party subsumed into GOP, sad attempts by Dems to occupy Occupy, Green becomes 'green' without those dirty hippies).  So they must be doing something right if their best ideas are being shoplifted.

Most importantly, political scientists get it and have for a long time.

"The irony is that no leading political scientist who studies political party systems believes that it is necessary to squelch minor parties in order to 'defend' the two-party system. The true definition of 'two-party system' is a system in which two particular parties are much bigger than all the others; it doesn't mean a system in which minor parties have atrophied into non-existence. The last leading political scientist who believed that it is socially useful to squelch minor parties was Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, but he changed his mind over five years ago, and now advocates that election laws treat minor parties equitably." -- Richard Winger, Ballot Access News December 12, 1996

Logic needs to stay out of Rouner's way, however.  He thinks he's on a roll.

That’s politics, and more importantly, that’s America. It’s not a place built by storming out of the room in a moralistic crusade, and it’s certainly not a place where sitting on the side-lines free from any blame deserves virtuous acclaim. There’s a reason Hillary Clinton wrote a book called Hard Choices, and even Donald Trump recognizes that if his vision for America is to matter he has to actually get in the game on a team that can win. So did Sanders. You have three choices. The last one is “do nothing,” and voting third party for president is just doing nothing with a big old bowl of sanctimonious bullshit on top. Just like praying for shooting victims who need blood donations and cities that need lead out of their water.  

Maybe I've missed it, but did Democrats get the lead out of the water while I wasn't paying attention?  Have they stopped the police from killing unarmed black men?  Have they banned fracking yet?  Repealed Citizens United?  Halted the TPP?

Ohhhhh: they just need more help in Congress, where all the guys and gals on both sides of the aisle are already owned by the banks, the pharmaceutical companies, and the NRA.  I think maybe Rouner missed the whole 'revolution' part of the equation.

As you might imagine, today's Jackass has been excoriated by the readers of FPH on the original page and on the Facebook page, very few of which happen to be orthodox Democrats or Republicans waiting to be scolded about not conforming.  This seems more like a successful clickbait trolling excursion, and if you read only a few of the responses at either place, you'll see our boy has been roasted and then seared in his own juices to a greater degree than I need to add to.

Much like the Texas Observer, Free Press Houston used to be a radical, iconoclastic, unabashedly liberal-before-progressive-was-the-word newspaper.  Then they went out and hired all these angry Hillbots, and then wonder why their subscriber base has abandoned them.

Sad!

Better Choices Funnies


There are more palatable options than chicken or fish ...

Saturday, August 06, 2016

#GNCinHOU - Assange, Stein, Baraka, West, and YOU

Today's speeches and the roll call of states will culminate a furious week of Green Party events, media coverage, and high profile exposure (at last) of America's only political option for peace.  One highlight breaking late is the "chairman" of Wikileaks, making some remarks from long distance just before lunchtime.  Perhaps you saw him last night on Bill Maher.



Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, the organization that recently posted thousands of the Democratic Party's internal emails online, will speak via live stream at the Green Party national convention, party officials announced Friday.

Assange is scheduled to speak at 11:45 a.m. Saturday over a live stream from the Embassy of Ecuador in London.

He will speak on the third day of the progressive party's national convention at the University of Houston, before the party nominates its 2016 presidential nominee, widely expected to be Jill Stein.

Assange is expected to be interviewed by 2004 Green Party presidential nominee David Cobb, party officials said in a statement Friday.

Wikileaks recently made headlines by releasing thousands of Democratic Party emails on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, suggesting that some DNC party officials quietly had backed Clinton. The revelations angered Sanders supporters, rocked the Democratic gathering and prompted the ouster of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The keynote speakers today will be Dr. Cornel West and YahNé Ndgo, late of the Bernie Sanders campaign and now -- like so many others -- advocates for Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka.

West was appointed to the Democratic Party's platform drafting committee by Sanders. The activist raised concerns over the party's stance on Palestinian rights, and later endorsed the Green Party, saying "there’s no way, based on moral grounds, those based on my own moral conscience, that I could support [the Democratic Party] platform."

He added about Sanders' ultimate support for Clinton's nomination at the Democratic National Convention: "And once my dear brother moved into his endorsement, his strong endorsement of the neoliberal disaster that Sister Hillary represents, there was no way that I could stay with Bernie Sanders any longer, had to break with the two-party system."

That should get a few pairs of Jockeys in a wad.


Here's a schedule of speakers and events.  Note that political conventions don't always run on time, but Assange will likely be prompt (satellite time is neither inexpensive nor flexible).  Dr. West is slated for 2 pm.  Videos from yesterday's pressers are already posted; Texas Green candidates down the ballot are represented in the third one there.

"Come for the revolution, stay for the party". Tonight, after the formalities conclude.


Music, food, a cash bar and lots more.

Throw some caysh into Jill's money boom.  She's already purchased some national teevee advertising, jumping ahead of Trump there and in this poll of voters under thirty.


If you can't be in Houston today for a little history, find a livestream.

Voter ID affidavits, and election day in HD 146

Charles has kept us up to date on both items, so I can only add a couple thoughts.


-- Twenty-seven four Democratic precinct chairs will select their (and my) new state representative from among a field of half a dozen or so contenders.  The favorites are Erica Lee Carter -- daughter of Cong. Sheila Jackson Lee and the oligarchs' pick -- and Shawn Thierry, a frequent Harris County judicial candidate for the Democrats in recent years.

My money is on Lee.  She opened her campaign at the SD-13 special election, which former HD-146 Rep. Borris Miles won (a prediction of the vote count I happened to nail).  HGLBT activist, social media marvel, and recent Daily Jackass award winner Kris Banks will probably have the live-Tweeting.  I'll check with him late morning to see who won, being elsewhere doing more exciting things personally.

Update: In the closest possible outcome, Thierry defeated Lee 13-11 when third challenger Larry Blackmon's vote opted not to force the top two into overtime.

After one round of voting by raising hands, Thierry had 12 votes, Carter had 11 and Blackmon 1. This led to an immediate runoff between Thierry and Carter, with a request for a change of voting procedure. Instead of raising hands, precinct chairs stood in line next to their candidate of choice. This time, Thierry beat Carter by two votes.

Charles with his take from the scene.


-- The parties in Veazey v. Abbott, the voter/photo ID litigation finally decided a couple of weeks ago by the Fifth Circuit, came to an agreement and the rules have been relaxed for voters.  Essentially those without picture ID may present their voter reg card, or phone bill, water bill, etc. confirming their identity, swear and sign (the affidavit) that they are who they say they are, and cast a provisional ballot.  In elections past, very few of those were ever counted because they generally involved the voter taking some kind of action between Election Day and the county canvass, which finalizes the election.  First, Matt Angle at Lone Star Project ...

The order would essentially allow voters whose name appears on the voter rolls but lacks a photo ID to cast a ballot if they can present other appropriate proof of identification including a utility bill, a bank statement, a paycheck, or a voter registration card.  Their vote can only be challenged if there is conclusive proof that the voter is not the person listed on the voter roll.

A person who is involved in this process locally spoke with me and explained how the verification process differs this time.  I have paraphrased that response in the next graf.

For BBM (ballot-by mail) voters, signature verification -- comparing the sigs on the current ballot with recent past ballots -- is the method by which those votes are certified as legitimate.  In the case of a provisional vote without ID, the voter has signed their voter registration card and their affidavit, and those two signatures can be compared just as they are (electronically, scanned) for BBM.  Beyond an obvious mismatch, they only reason a vote would not be counted is if someone came forward with compelling evidence that the provisional voter is not who they represented themselves to be when voting (and signing the affidavit).   Quite a high bar to clear for a ballot to be rejected.

Expect there to be many folks in Harris County and across the state who are delighted with the fact that they have been re-enfranchised for the coming election.

Update: Ernest Canning at Bradblog with more.

Friday, August 05, 2016

"The Greater Good"


Jill Stein's latest ad.



More posts today than yesterday, as the registration and kickoff obligated my time offline.  (Daily Jackass candidates are lining up for judging.)  Follow the Twitter feed to the right for the latest or check in here and on Facebook.  Read a summary of the opening day and see some pics on Flickr.

Here's a few more pics from the GPTX FB page.

Thursday, August 04, 2016

Greens get CNN town hall for August 17

The Libertarians, Gary Johnson and Bill Weld, held their second one just last night, and now the party of the progressive people are getting theirs, in two weeks.


CNN announced Wednesday it will host one of its town hall events with the Green Party's presumptive presidential nominee Jill Stein and her presumptive running mate, Ajamu Baraka.

The hour-long event will be held on Wednesday, August 17 at 9:00 p.m. ET. The event will broadcast live on CNN, CNN International, CNN en Espanol and online via CNNgo.

Libertarians draw from Clinton to some small degree greater than Jill Stein does in recent polling.  One more thing for nervous Clinton folks to be concerned with.  If somebody happens to post something about Libs "siphoning" from Dems, I'll have to feature it in the Daily Jackass.

Meanwhile, here's a mathematical analysis of how to not waste your vote.

Follow me on Twitter @PDiddie or watch this space for developments from the Greens' presidential nominating convention, opening today at U of H.

Wednesday, August 03, 2016

Yes, Trump is terrible (but the next Republican will be worse)


And speaking of shitty, why isn't Hillary beating Drumpf by a greater margin?  (That's a rhetorical question, most of us -- even Erick Erickson -- already know why.)

By any conventional standard, Donald Trump just blundered through the worst three days of any presidential candidate in living memory.

Showing a characteristic refusal to back down from a fight, Trump took the almost unthinkable step of publicly escalating a feud with the parents of fallen US solider, Capt. Humayun Khan, who blasted Trump at last week's Democratic convention as unfit for the presidency.

And in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn't make a military move into Ukraine -- even though Putin has already done that by seizing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

In any normal political campaign, these stumbles would hobble Trump's ability to pass the fabled commander in chief test, in which Americans take their measure of a candidate and decide whether he is fit to lead them.
But no one needs reminding that 2016 is not a conventional political year.

The Republican Party is NOT imploding, but they are having an existential crisis.  Let's admit it: this cycle wouldn't be much different if Ted Cruz was the nominee.  I agree with this guy's premise (but not his rationale -- "Free trade GOOD!"), who says that the GOP has to lose this year so that they can win in 2020.

There is a Simpsons episode where two aliens, Kang and Kodos, invade our planet and scheme to take charge by abducting and impersonating the two US presidential candidates.

They are discovered before polling day, but this does not prevent their triumph.  Kodos declares: “It’s true, we are aliens, but what are you going to do about it?  It’s a two party system; you have to vote for one of us”.  One plucky man says: “I believe I’ll vote for a third party candidate”.  But Kang responds witheringly: “Go ahead, throw your vote away!”

No, seriously.

The key dividing line in the United States (has) little to do with Republican vs. Democrat, rich vs. poor, or liberal vs. conservative. To explode these conventional oppositions, it would take a billionaire Republican populist, who had once been a solid Democrat and who offered a political program that mixed together liberal and conservative ideas, conspiracy theories and racial animus, but above all else exhortations [...] to rise up and retake the country. Indeed, the triumph of Trump in the Republican primaries -- based, in part, on his appeal to former white working-class Democrats and independents, his fierce attacks on mainstream Republicans, and his flouting of what passes for conventional wisdom about electability -- sent the pundits back to their think tanks to figure out what on earth was happening with American voters.

Trump was, they concluded, sui generis, a peculiar mutation of the American political system generated by the unholy coupling of reality television and the Tea Party revolt. But Trump is not, in fact, a sport of nature. He reflects trends taking place around the world. He is, in many ways, just a mouthpiece ... 

Trump won't be able to overcome his raging ego, narcissism, or lack of emotional maturity (Clinton was spot on when she said he can be baited with a Tweet), and that's before you consider his hideous bigotry and highly questionable business dealings.  He's quite the fraud, but he'll fail, and the GOP nominee next go-round will not make his rookie mistakes.

Cruz is taking copious notes, and Paul Ryan can surely put a shinier coat of lacquer on his own neo-fascism to fool enough people disgusted with Hillary's presidency four years from now.  And that dynamic will hold irrespective of how well the Greens and Libertarians can do in the next cycle, after what portends to be a banner year in 2016.

This cycle is unprecedented but reasonably predictable.  Twenty twenty?  Not so much.

Scattershooting more donkeys


-- Your Daily Jackass is John Cobarruvias of Bay Area Houston.  Previous jacks and jennets are here, here, and here.  John was a runaway winner based on his command -- he's reliving his days as an Aggie Cadet -- that can be countered simply enough with "No, we must not".

The difference between Clinton and Trump is the degree to which you would prefer a war-mongering corporatist who might be a sociopath versus an actual sociopath.  You know what they say about voting for a Democrat pretending to be a Republican running against an actual Republican: people go for the real thing every time.  It is, as most of us know, questionable as to whether Drumpf is an actual Republican, and that's causing an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance on the right.

If a Jackass of the 2016 Cycle is eventually awarded, John's got a strong lead on the rest of the herd (or drove, or pace).

Jackasses on deck : "Repeat after me", and "Why Berners should be good losers".

-- Amaju Baraka is Jill Stein's running mate.  If you have to ask, "who?" then you qualify for enlightenment.  Don't forget that fear is the path to the Dark Side.

-- More debunking of the anti-vax smear of Stein by the scummiest of Democrats.


Time to Move On, Donks?

That's all I have time for.  Follow me on Twitter (@PDiddie) for Green convention updates, daily recaps in this space, and whatever winds up on the Texas Green Party Facebook page.

Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Debating Blue vs. Green with SCOTUS as backdrop

Ed. note: As this post was being composed, Jill Stein has selected human rights activist Ajamu Baraka to be her vice-presidential running mate.  More on that later.

I don't want to be harsh every single day for the next three months to all of these binary thinkers, but I need to point out how often they use the same threadbare logic.

-- Ben Jealous debated Jill Stein on Democracy Now (you may recall he was a Sanders supporter up to last week) and the tropes he employed were, in order, "Trump", "privilege", "George W. Bush in 2000", and "Greens need to start at the bottom", all of which have been debunked in these pages in recent days.

Jealous also referenced at the end a mashup of 'pie in the sky' and Nader.  ('Pie in the sky' is one of John Coby's old standbys; he's earned future Daily Jackass consideration with his 'pinch your nose because you must'.)

-- Robert Reich and Chris Hedges had the same faceoff in the same venue, and Reich went Trump, "Supreme Court", "wait until next cycle", and followed that with Hillary's own faux pas, which riffed off Ted Cruz at the RNC's 'vote your conscience'.

These debates would be very instructive for those who still have an open mind as to whether to vote for Clinton or Stein.  There are always going to be certain understandings -- biases -- that each person listens or reads with, so in that sense there are very few true undecideds.  The arguments against Stein, as Jealous and Reich demonstrate, are always rooted in the same handful of lame rebuttals.

Let's examine one that rarely gets scrutiny: the SCOTUS premise, beaten like a rug previously here but this time we take a look from a more nuanced perspective.  In 2000, Barbra Streisand hosted a gala fundraiser for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in Los Angeles and raised what at the time was reported as a record-breaking amount of money, $5.1 million.  I remember watching at least part of the event, though not live, perhaps on YouTube or as part of some other documentary some years later.  Tommy Lee Jones, Gore's old college roommate, did the introductions.  Streisand and several other prominent artists of the time performed, and Barbra gave a short speech, calling for Gore's election to "reform campaign finance regulations, strengthen gun control laws, improve education and healthcare, safeguard a woman's right to choose, and control homophobia".

Isn't it fascinating how little things change in our presidential politics?

Streisand's brief mention of the Supreme Court's importance in the 2000 election was direct and blunt (I can still see her holding up her fingers with a determined look on her face): "The first three reasons to vote for Al Gore are the Supreme Court... the Supreme Court... and the Supreme Court."  You can read the rest here.

At the beginning of this primary season about a year ago, I polled a handful of Democratic activists about their choice for nominee and why, and a couple of them, sadly, named 'Clinton, because of the Supreme Court'.  Leaving aside the question of picking a party nominee on this uncareful logic, it seems obvious even to your average Democrat fifth-grader that electing a Democrat and not a Republican because of the SCOTUS makes sense for the same reason that it does for a Republican to vote for a Republican instead of a Democrat.

Having cleared that up, let's return again to the year 2000 and Gore and W. Bush and the infamous circumstances that occurred in Florida that year.  The myth that Ralph Nader is to blame for the outcome has been thoroughly refuted, but let's look closer at the numbers laid out by Jim Hightower in the oft-cited Salon piece from November 27, 2000 -- a full two weeks before Gore actually quit, on December 12.  Bold emphasis is mine.

Now it gets really ugly for the Gore campaign, for there are two other Florida constituencies that cost them more votes than Nader did. First, Democrats. Yes, Democrats! Nader only drew 24,000 Democrats to his cause, yet 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush. Hello. If Gore had taken even 1 percent of these Democrats from Bush, Nader’s votes wouldn’t have mattered. Second, liberals. Sheesh. Gore lost 191,000 self-described liberals to Bush, compared to less than 34,000 who voted for Nader. 

If the Supreme Court was such a vital part of the message to Democrats to elect Gore, why did over 300,000 registered Florida Democrats vote for Bush instead?  Did they miss the memo?  Did they defy the exhortations of thousands of their fellow Democrats, from Barbra Streisand on down?  Were they just, as so many people have delighted in saying about Florida Democrats in 2000, stupid?

What about those 191K who self-identify as 'liberal" Democrats?  What in the world was going on inside those people's brains?

I've not been able to track down -- in a decade of searching -- a single solitary response from the Blame Nader crowd, or anybody else for that matter, as to why these folks cast a ballot for Bush and not Gore.  I know they've never been appropriately held to account for Gore's defeat, while Nader's 90,000 or so votes always are.  Which begs the next question: how is it that Nader's votes are assumed to belong to Democrats, when more than triple that number of Ds can run off the reservation and vote Republican without consequence?  Whatever conclusions we might draw, one thing seems certain: "SCOTUS" was obviously not an important enough reason for them to vote for their own party's nominee, no matter what Barbra Streisand said.

(Sidebar: "SCOTUS" is a tenuous argument also because so many Justices have not turned out to be the "slam dunks" John Sununu, to use one example, predicted David Souter would be.  Hillary Clinton will likely appoint judges whom she believes most closely resemble her own mushy middle, corporate-styled centrism: Merrick Garland, Sri Srinivasan, Amy Klobuchar.  We're more likely to see those political types grow more conservative than liberal as the years pass.)

I suspect to the chagrin of Hillary supporters everywhere that history may be repeating itself in 2016.  It might be that the old and tired arguments to vote for the moderate Democrat against the freak-right fascist might carry even less weight than they have in elections past.  Let's establish clearly that a Trump presidency would be a disaster for all of us, irrespective of our class and/or privilege.

But it is still not a good enough reason for progressive Democrats -- who have been bullied and defrauded from start to finish in the just-completed primary -- to abandon their principles, pinch their noses, and avert disaster on behalf of others.  If Clinton is to win the Sanders bloc, she's going to have to do so without the standard guilt and shaming.  She and her supporters are going to have to come up with some more intelligent reasons for people to vote for her.

I don't see it happening, but they have a few final shots at it.  If they want to take them, that is.

Monday, August 01, 2016

The Daily Jackasses: "Anti-science pandering"

Did you know there was a massive group of voters out there just waiting to have their concerns acknowledged by a political party?  Like the renowned Chupacabra, the existence of the formidable Anti-Science Caucus by a couple of Hillbots has been exposed.

Kris Banks and Allan Brain, fairly devoted Democrats in the fine Blue Dog/Houston tradition, have made certain that everyone is aware of this terrible development by interpreting the words of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein's views as ... well, as the headline above indicates.

(These guys don't often make their FB posts public, and they may delete this one or block me eventually -- which is why I'll edit this post with screenshots if they do -- so go look and read while you can, and while their "friends" are chiming in.  Importance of full context and all that.)

Let's begin at the beginning.  Back in March, a Reddit began on this topic, and a rabid tome added there took off like Zika among the haters of the Green.  A couple of weeks ago, someone brought it to my attention and I responded in the comments of this post, reprinted below.

I read the Reddit; you are mistaken. She is NOT anti-vax. The WORST characterization you could imply is that she is "pro-choice" for parents about vaccinations (which might be a problem if there were only public schools in the nation).

1. All 50 states have a parental waiver of some kind, be it medical, religious, philosophical, or all three (like Texas). Forty-seven plus DC allow a religious exemption.

You want to argue egregious, start there.

2. This astronomer makes your case better than any I've read, for what it's worth (and is certainly closer to my own view). And schools have the right to ban students who haven't been vaccinated, particularly when there's an outbreak in their district, because of the legal liability they risk.

3. Anyway, Luddites mostly home-school these days -- when they can't afford to send their unvaccinated children to a private school, that is.

4. Stein is also an MD, which is to say that she knows more about these things than people who post to Reddit or comment on blogs or Google up someone's screed.

5. The bottom line is that you simply cannot force parents to vaccinate their children.

6. Because Stein is not strongly-enough-pro-vax for you is not the same thing as being anti-vax. That's the Brockolli part.

So the issue seemed resolved ... until David Brock and his compensated minions got busy with the propaganda catapult last week.  Then Snopes weighed in, first with "Unproven" and revised just yesterday with "False".  You'd think that would have settled the matter, but there's this thing about lies being repeated often enough, you know.

(If you wish to understand precisely what the issue and the problem is in Texas, Anna Dragsbaek at TribTalk has your explainer.  There may be some side-eye at Stein mashed up in there but unlike the Jackasses I'll not read too much into it; Dragsbaek makes the points that need to be made.)

That brings us to Wonkette, a late addition to this morning's other two Jackasses.  If you're Banks, Brain, some of their friends or any other Hillbot looking to justify your festering resentment at this cycle's surge of the third party candidates, there you go.

Where the whole pandering premise fails is at its foundation: there simply aren't enough people in the Anti-Vax Caucus to help Stein register so much as a blip higher in the polls, much less put her in the White House.  I shouldn't have to remind anybody that she's focusing on disillusioned Democrats, aka Berners, a much larger target.

There's no pandering because there's statistically nobody to pander to.  This is simply a sad attempt by Blue Dogs and Yellow Dogs looking to cast a smear in her direction.  Because that 3% or 5% of the popular vote, max, that Stein stands to collect is more than enough to aggravate the longest-running horror show orthodox Democrats torture themselves with: Hillary will be "Nader-ed" in a battleground state, just like Al Gore in Florida in 2000, the PTSD from which yesterday's poor Jackass still suffers.  And so they are compelled to lash out, like the man who comes home from work after a tongue-lashing from the boss and kicks his cat.

Whaddaya gon' do when grownups who claim to be the smarter of the two major party's voters are scared of monsters under their bed?  Shit, I'm so old I remember when Bill White was afraid that Barack Obama might endorse him in his bid for Texas governor in 2010.


¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Update: Socratic Gadfly distills it as well.  There are honest objections to hold if people want to do the depth of thinking about them.  None of today's Jackasses managed that; it wasn't their intention to do much thinking anyway.

Update II: And yet more nuance on this topic.  It's perfectly okay with me for people to disagree with a candidate's stand on an issue, but it is duplicitous to put words in her mouth and then condemn those words (i.e. strawman).

The Weekly Wrangle


Off the Kuff wrote about the latest voting rights lawsuit in the state of Texas.

"The Daily Jackass", a new series beginning at PDiddie's Brains and Eggs, spotlights the unhinged, unsubstantiated rants of hard-boiled Democrats who hold something hostile against Jill Stein and the Green Party.  The first Jackass featured is Chris Hooks at the Texas Observer.

SocraticGadfly, after defending Donald Trump from conspiratorial accusations of being a Manchurian Candidate, eventually fesses up to being a Manchurian Blogger.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme says kudos to McAllen for policing their police force. Power requires responsibility and accountability.

Neil at All People Have Value notes that the NFL keeps on lying about how football causes concussions at the youth football level. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

US Rep. Michael Burgess held a town hall meeting in Lewisville, reports the Texan-Journal.

Asian American Action Fund celebrates the election of Rep. Grace Meng to DNC vice-chair.

In the wake of the DNC convention, Christina Gleason at MOMocrats offers a primer on how to reach out to disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters.

Texas Leftist was thrilled to see Broadway's brightest lights unite for Orlando at the DNC to sing "What the World Needs Now".

And in more music news, Dos Centavos posted about The Krayolas' two new tunes, “Piñata Trump” and “El Cucuy”.

Texas Vox writes about Austin's energy rate case and its environmental impacts.

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

These blogs are also keeping Texas great (no makeover necessary).

TFN Insider sees former SBOE's Cynthia Dunbar making a poor case for her company's seriously-flawed Mexican American studies textbook.

Ashton Woods at Strength in Numbers made a point about Greg Abbott's support of the Black Lives Matter movement by calling for a new law to make it a hate crime if a police officer is killed in the line of duty.

An intoxicated former Somervell County deputy discharged his weapon while shouting racial epithets inside an Ellis County church, notes the Salon.

Space City Weather lets us a breathe a sigh of relief as the first tropical disturbance of the hurricane season seems to be veering away from Texas.

The Fort Wort Star-Telegram, via Sayfie Review Texas, marks today as the first in Texas that concealed handguns are allowed on university campuses.

The Texas Tribune points out that as Texas Democrats left Philadelphia for home, they do so with very few electoral prospects.

Anna Dragsbaek objects to "conscientious" vaccine exemptions.

Brantley Hightower considers the evolution of Whataburger's architecture.

The Bloggess explains how Pokemon Go helps her with her anxiety and agoraphobia.

Eileen Smith makes a triumphant return to blogging.

Paradise In Hell is excited by recent archaeological finds at the Alamo.

And Pages of Victory isn't 'feeling the Johnson'.

#GNCinHOU readies for kickoff

Before we send up the profile of the two local Daily Jackasses today -- previewed at the end of yesterday's DJ -- here's some good news to report.  (Not for them, I suspect.)

Nina Turner, former Democratic state senator from Cleveland and high profile Bernie Sanders supporter, has confirmed that she’s received an offer from the Green Party to run for Vice President under Jill Stein. Turner said that she is still considering the offer to cleveland.com today in a telephone interview.
Both Stein and Turner have become rallying figures for Bernie Sanders supporters who have become disenchanted by the Democratic party and the Clinton campaign.
Turner was at the center of controversy last week when her previously scheduled speech nominating Bernie Sanders for President was cancelled by the Democratic National Convention at the last minute. A small rally protesting her treatment by the Democrats was held on Wednesday involving Hollywood actors Rosario Dawson, Susan Surandon, and Danny Glover. Some Sanders delegates at the DNC even pushed to nominate Turner for Vice President as an alternative to Senator Tim Kaine.
The Green Party holds its convention in Houston starting this Thursday, so Turner’s answer to the Stein campaign’s invitation is expected within the next few days.

Check the #ImWithNina hashtag for more background, or the new #RunNinaRun one for the latest, trending as this is posted.

Even if Turner takes a pass (which I kind of expect; it's very difficult to transition from Blue to Green in a matter of months), the media has been alerted, and the one thing that's still missing from this weekend's convention is some corporate teevee coverage, even in limited amount.  Like grinding out ballot access, it's hard work getting the talking heads to talk about something besides the 'he said/she said' BS.

These developments are making Shrillary Democrats nervous, and the very first 'Daily Jackass' has made travel plans to be in town this weekend.  Looking forward to welcoming you to the convention, Chris!  Are you one of the "anonymous" registrants on the media credentialing page?  We don't want you to have to pay the buck fifty to get in -- I know how tight the Observer's budget is -- so check with me at the registration table on Thursday morning if you have problems.

Perhaps we should all be aware that it's now legal to carry a concealed weapon on Texas university campuses as of today.  I'm certain it's just an unfortunate coincidence that it comes on the anniversary of one of the Lone Star State's most infamous gun violence legacies.

Half a century ago, a sniper perched on a University of Texas tower unleashed a killing spree that left 16 dead, and for the first time since then the school will hold an official memorial for an event that shocked the nation.
But overshadowing the anniversary of the Aug. 1, 1966 tower shooting is the start of a new law backed by Republican lawmakers to allow more guns in more places at public universities. 
The lawmakers say the "campus carry" law, which goes into effect August 1, could prevent another mass shooting, while many survivors of the university tower shooting half a century ago see it as a chillingly wrong-headed approach that could spark more killing. 
The campus carry law allows those over 21 with a concealed handgun permit to take guns into classrooms and several parts of the campus.

Probably a good idea to keep disruptions to a minimum, yes?

Sunday, July 31, 2016

The Daily Jackass: Misandry Angie

There's a lot of bile in her two-parter, but this is the only segment worth excerpting.

You may remember that the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore came down to Florida, where each major candidate took about 48.5% of the vote, and third party candidate Ralph Nader took around 3%. The closeness of the race, the suspected election fraud in Tampa, the hanging chads in Miami, and a conservative Supreme Court gave the win to Bush. If the 3% of voters who chose Nader (including me) hadn’t, they must [sic] likely would have picked Gore, for the entire country.

Regrettably, what we have here is someone who feels personally responsible for having elected W president, when nothing could be further from the truth (as has been pointed out time and time again). Jim Hightower, writing two weeks before Gore finally threw in the towel on the recount.

Now it gets really ugly for the Gore campaign, for there are two other Florida constituencies that cost them more votes than Nader did. First, Democrats. Yes, Democrats! Nader only drew 24,000 Democrats to his cause, yet 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush. Hello. If Gore had taken even 1 percent of these Democrats from Bush, Nader’s votes wouldn’t have mattered. Second, liberals. Sheesh. Gore lost 191,000 self-described liberals to Bush, compared to less than 34,000 who voted for Nader. 

Angie, bless her heart.

You don’t have to vote for Jill Stein just because you’re unhappy with the current situation. Based on the mechanics of electoral college voting, Clinton or Trump will be president, and a split left in contested races can deliver all of a state’s votes into his hands. You don’t have to actively make the situation worse, as I did when I voted from ignorance of electoral in Florida in 2000. [sic]

At least Angie's not advancing the debunked smear of Stein being "anti-vaxx".  (That's already produced plenty of fresh Jackass O'Day prospects for me.)

On the chance that it's simply new to her, I will hope this long-standing, widely-dispersed, easily-available factual data about Nader and Gore and Bush and the 2000 election can console Angie's guilt, but after 16 years of self-flagellation I have doubts as to whether the best of professional counseling will enable her to forgive herself.

Some people you just can't reach.

Jackasses on deck: local Democratic activists Kris Banks and Allan Brain, displaying their "kick-the-cat" responses to the Stein/anti-vaxx smear.

Sunday Funnies


There are other choices ...


Saturday, July 30, 2016

The Daily Jackass: Chris Hooks

The Texas Observer's political writer/Democratic gun-for-hire has been putting extra bitters in his cocktails while on duty in Philadelphia.

"Cranks", "dead-enders", "messianic" (in a description of Jill Stein and a hilarious comparison with Bob Bavakian) is nothing more than excessive spleen-venting from the most Green-hostile of Democrats sixty days ahead of the first scheduled presidential debate.

Dude.  I know it was hot and wet in the City of Brotherly Love (scroll down to 'Phooey, Philly') but maybe you should wait until the Greens start to actually register a little in the polling before you twist your knickers that tight.

Oh.  Well.  Maybe now is a good time to shit yourself.


With the counterpoint, Dr. Mark Jones of Rice University's Baker Institute has an exceptionally respectful, direct, and thorough advance of next week's presidential nominating convention here in H-Town.  Bold emphasis is mine.

Last week, national attention was focused on Cleveland and the Republican Party’s National Convention. This week, national attention is focused on Philadelphia, where the Democratic Party’s National Convention is being held. Houstonians should not feel entirely left out, however, since Houston will host the Green Party National Convention next week (August 4-7) at the University of Houston campus.

The main order of business at the Green Party Convention will be to nominate the party’s presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein. In doing so, the party will symbolically launch its national campaign, which includes not only Stein’s presidential bid but hundreds of other campaigns throughout the country for offices ranging from U.S. senator to state representative to county commissioner.

At present, Stein has formally qualified to appear on the ballot in 23 states (including the District of Columbia) and is expected to qualify in between 20 and 25 additional states before filing closes in early September. In addition to retaining the support of individuals who voted for her during the 2012 presidential election, Stein and her fellow Greens hope to capture the votes of Bernie Sanders’ supporters and others who want to cast a protest vote against Hillary Clinton, signal to the Democratic Party that it needs to move to the left, or who believe that the future of the country’s progressive movement does not lie within the Democratic Party but rather via the creation of robust alternatives to what they consider to be a two-party duopoly.

Stein’s prospects for victory are nonexistent. However, an improved performance by Stein would be positive for the Green Party in two principal ways. First, it would demonstrate the existence of popular support for the Green Party and its type of progressive agenda while simultaneously improving the party’s name recognition and brand among the general public.  Second, in a host of states, a good showing by Stein could represent the difference between guaranteed access to the ballot in 2018 and (in some cases) 2020 and either spending scarce resources on costly signature gathering campaigns to obtain ballot access or not being able to run candidates for public office.

Texas is one of the states where an improved Stein performance could be invaluable to the Green Party in regard to ballot access. In recent election cycles, Texas Democrats did not run a complete statewide slate of candidates, and the Green Party was able to maintain its ballot status by surpassing the required 5 percent vote threshold in the contests lacking a Democratic candidate. In 2016, however, Texas Democrats are fielding candidates for every statewide office, and unless a statewide Green Party candidate wins at least 5 percent of the vote in one of the eight statewide races, the party would need to undertake a very difficult ballot access campaign in 2018. To qualify for ballot access in two years, the Green Party of Texas would have to obtain 47,183 valid signatures in less than three months from registered voters who did not vote in the 2018 Democratic or Republican primaries. Since many signatures end up being invalidated, the Greens would need to gather close to a 100,000 signatures to safely cross this threshold and qualify for ballot access, a Herculean task for a party with very limited resources.

This year, in addition to Stein, the Green Party is fielding six candidates for statewide office in Texas (one for railroad commissioner, three for the Supreme Court and two for the Court of Criminal Appeals), almost 20 congressional candidates and around two dozen candidates for other offices ranging from state representative to sheriff to county commissioner. If Stein or one of her fellow Greens does not win at least 5 percent of the statewide vote on Nov. 8, this year could mark the last year for some time that Texas voters are provided with so many options to “vote Green.”

That covers every single base.  Nothing to quibble with and nothing to add.

Jackass on deck: Misandry Angie (who probably isn't capable of receiving whatever I blog as anything but 'mansplaining', but I'll offer it anyway).

Friday, July 29, 2016

Clinton sticks the landing (mostly)


If you've ever watched figure-skating compulsories ... well, that's what last night was like.

Hillary Clinton gave the most important speech of her political career Thursday and did not blow it.

The speech itself will not go down in history as great oratory; it was more like a talented figure skater working through required elements. There was at the top a plea for the restive Bernie Sanders supporters to join with her. She noted that the convention had approved a heavily Sanders-influenced platform and she promised that as president she would implement it. “Your cause is our cause,” she said.

It mostly worked. There was a bit of booing, but no major disruptions as she skated through the rest of her program: The promises to raise up working families; the repeated calls for the country to come together; the pledges that the rich must pay more and the poor must get paid more.

And then she turned her guns on Trump, which is guaranteed safe territory at a Democratic convention. Her take on her opponent could be summed up by her description of his acceptance speech last week: “He spoke for 70-odd minutes — and I do mean odd.”

Clinton’s speech was far more predictable but not quite as memorable. But she executed all her required moves and will likely be scored well by the judges.

Another POV from across the pond, same take.

Mrs Clinton, in an acceptance speech that occasionally soared and sometimes trudged along, did her best to frame the upcoming general election race in her favour.

Donald Trump had his shot last week in Cleveland. Now it was her turn.

And, like her Republican opponent, she did it by trying to paint herself as five different personas.

Leader, optimist, progressive, doer, ground-breaker (aka glass-ceiling shatterer).  Four out of five ain't bad.  Democrats collectively went from horrified a week ago to consoled and content.  What were y'all so scared of?

In the audience, Clinton supporters were moved to tears, including 16-year-old Victoria Sanchez.

"This is more than I ever could have imagined," she said. "I know that I have just lived history and I can follow in her footsteps. This changes my entire life."

I'm happy for all those who took the moment as historic -- as if constantly seeing and hearing the word during television coverage was ever going to let us forget it -- and let's not discount the value of the grassroots army she mobilized, from women to Latino to LGBTQ.

But back to the speech.  It was a real tour de force for those who crafted it; pitch-perfect in some spots.  Every box checked: direct appeals to the Sanders caucus, Trump's balls severely busted, no mention of her recent legal troubles or DWS (who has truly been a complete disaster).  The GOP butt-hurt was strong.

Many of the conservatives who watched with dismay as the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump have now watched with amazement as Democrats co-opted some of Republicans' favorite themes at the Democratic National Convention.

Democrats' thinking was clear: We're the only political party left for grown-ups, so we'd better make sure we have something to offer voters on both sides of the aisle.


There was a clear choice about tone, especially on the last two days of the convention: Speakers would not mock conservatives for getting into bed with Donald Trump. They would mock Trump and make the case that conservatives should be embarrassed and ashamed that their party nominated him – and should look across the aisle at a party that shares more of their goals and values than they may have realized.

So the Democratic convention had retired military officers making the case for Hillary Clinton's steady hand as commander in chief, paeans to Ronald Reagan, and optimistic messages about the indispensability and exceptional nature of America.

Marco Rubio was specifically one who was shitting bricks.  My least favorite moment was the Screaming General, John Allen, and the "USA, USA" chanting and flag-waving.  Straight out of Republican central casting, and as bad as it sounds.  Even Clinton's own segue-way into bellicosity couldn't match it, perhaps by design.  I'll just give you the whole speech and let you decide.  (Skip to the two-minute mark if you'd rather not hear his introduction by Rep. Ted Lieu.)



And Little Marco was also one of the few who acknowledged the protests in the hall.  And the media had a lot to complain about.

With the exception of the disruptions mounted by the Bernie or Bust delegates, the Democrats’ convention ran pretty smoothly — inside the arena.

Outside the arena was a different story. Unlike Cleveland, the Philadelphia convention site is about 6 miles from downtown, where the bulk of delegates were sleeping and the bulk of parties and events were staged. That meant an enormous amount of vehicle traffic that created gridlock around the arena at peak hours. Making matters worse, the state police closed a lane on I-95 to enforce a ban on overweight trucks, creating massive backups for anyone coming in from outside the city.

Media were housed in giant tents that were steamy hot by midday and freezing cold when not in direct sun. Summer downpours pounded the cloth ceilings, making everything else inaudible, and when lightning approached, reporters were advised to run across an open parking lot in the rain to take shelter in a baseball stadium.

The broad consensus of attendees was we would rather be in Cleveland.

See you in Houston next week. folks.  Can't promise cooler weather, but the crowds will be thinner and we might even have a hurricane.

I'd say Madam Secretary is in for a yuuuge convention bounce, and this poll from swingy Pennsylvania showing her with a nine-point lead may or may not be an outlier.

Watch for a new series coming this weekend: the Daily Jackass.  It will feature somebody in the media ragging on Jill Stein or voting Green.  First up: Chris Hooks at the Texas Observer.