Scattershooting the blogroll

-- Because the "most recent posts" feed in the blogroll to the right is jacked, I have switched it to alphabetical order until it can be fixed.  I prefer "most recent", but the alpha listing will enable you to more easily find something that you have followed here previously.  There's lots of 'T's because of 'The' and 'Texas", so be patient in searching.

-- I've also made several additions and subtractions, so there is considerably more fresh content and minority POV.  And fewer Shillbots.

-- Here are some photographs from the Standing Rock camp, the swelling group of protestors joining the Hunkpapa Lakota and Yanktonai Dakota -- and the support of almost one hundred other tribes -- opposing the latest response from the fossil fuel industry to work around the blocking of Keystone XL.  It's taking on a Camp Casey quality.

-- This is what the planet is up against.  It's the reason why you have Democrats, especially Texas Democrats, supporting fracking just as much as you do Republicans.  It does make that Peak Oil conversation look quaint though, doesn't it?  Do you think they'll be able to extract most of this vast supply of oil and gas for equally massive profits before we all fry?

None of the Above for CiC

The biggest loser appears to have been Matt Lauer.  First, to the duopoly combatants.

After months of what the military calls stand-off attacks, launched from a distance, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump finally met on the same stage Wednesday night for hand-to-hand combat.

War analogies are almost as distasteful as football ones, aren't they?

Unfortunately for those seeking information on their respective military policies, they were separated by a half-hour, which meant there was plenty of unilluminating blather spewed by both candidates. That’s to be expected when neither has issued a detailed national-security blueprint or spelled out their plans to defeat ISIS with any specificity.

The candidates ran through their talking points—little they haven’t said before—set apart by stirring martial music, a “live exclusive” MSNBC logo on the screen, and nasal-spray and bladder-control advertisements. Of course, with each candidate limited to about 25 minutes, they couldn’t say much. Clinton spent much of her allotted time responding to questions over her lousy email security while serving as secretary of state. By the time a veteran asked her a serious question about defeating ISIS, moderator Matt Lauer jumped in, encouraging her to answer “as briefly as you can.”

Fun.  The lies and bullshit got thicker, though.

Clinton said she would follow the plodding path blazed by President Obama. “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we are not putting ground troops into Syria,” she said. “We’re going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops.” Trump didn’t address the issue, except to confirm he would destroy ISIS quickly. “The generals have been reduced to rubble,” he argued of the U.S. military’s high command, their hands tied by an overly cautious White House.

But Trump, who said last year that he knew “more about ISIS than the generals do,” has suddenly done an about face and says he will order “my generals”—itself a jarring construction—to devise a plan to defeat ISIS. Obama, of course, has done that as well, and has decided on a go-slow approach to grind the caliphate into dust. Sure, the U.S. could steamroll into the Syrian city of Raqqa, crushing at least ISIS’s physical capital. “I’ve talked to some U.S. generals who are really frustrated,” retired Marine general Anthony Zinni told Time Aug. 31. “They could be in Raqqa in a week.” But that would only set off a new wave of problems, as the U.S. has learned, relearned, and learned again in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Trump dismissed such concerns. In a non-sequitur, he suggested that a Trump Administration would “take the oil” to end such turmoil.

I'm as repulsed as any Clinton supporter.  Believe me.  But because of her lack of press availability over the past year, she was once again forced to refry the email beans.

She may have wanted to talk about why she is qualified to be US commander in chief, but she spent nearly a third of her time on the defensive about her emails.

She talked about classification "headers" and explained that there was "no evidence" her server had been hacked. She even said it may have been safer than those of the state department's, given that the government's (non-classified) system had indeed been breached.

When it came to handling classified information, she was unapologetic. "I did exactly what I should have done and I take it very seriously," she said. "Always have, always will."

For those keeping track at home, Mrs Clinton has gone from asserting that she never relayed classified information to that she never sent "marked" classified documents to that she never sent material with classified headers.

That's the rhetorical equivalent of rear-guard action that ends with your army pushed into the sea.

Her Iraq War authorization as a senator and the Libyan matter were also parsed.  As usual, she was unable to mollify the critics.  But leave it to Lauer to lower the bar enough for both Trump and Clinton to slither under it.

So Lauer didn't correct Trump on his record about Iraq?” The Washington Post’s Phil Rucker tweeted.

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof wrote that the forum was “an embarrassment to journalism,” while his colleague Paul Krugman wrote that “everyone knew this would happen,” but Lauer didn’t “have a follow-up planned” for Trump’s answer.

"I hate media-on-media violence, but Trump's support for the invasion of Iraq has been. .. rather well documented. No Lauer follow-up?” wrote Yahoo News’ Olivier Knox.

NBC News’ own political unit fact-checked Trump's claim later, calling it “false”.

To be sure, Lauer got credit for pushing Trump on his plan for defeating ISIS and confronting Trump with a tweet of his from 2013 on the thousands of unreported sexual assault in the military where Trump said: “What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?” Many also lamented the short amount of time allotted for each candidate, just 30 minutes including audience questions.

But that didn’t take away from what many journalists saw as a quick and easy fact check.

"How can someone like @MLauer not set the record straight on Trump's bogus claim of being against the war in Iraq?” wrote the Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler.

Trump was buffoonish on the military rape question as well.

Trump [...]  began by  saying that it is  a "massive problem" and that "we're going to have to come down very, very hard on that."

"The best thing we can do is set up a court system within the military," he said according to Time. "Right now the court system practically doesn't exist."

[...] Lauer quickly interjected to read a tweet from Trump three years ago. In May 2013, Trump said that sexual assault was to be "expected" when you put women in the military:

26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2013

After Lauer called Trump out on his 3-year-old tweet, Trump maintained saying, "It is a correct tweet. There are many people that think that's absolutely correct."

Lauer then asked if that means Trump would take women out of the military and the Republican nominee said, "No, not take them out, but something has to be happened [sic]. When you have somebody that does something so evil, so bad as that, there has to be consequences for that person. You should have to go after that person. Right now, nobody is doing anything."

Incoherent.

Despite the whining in advance that Hillary would "lose" because Trump is graded on a curve, and the predictable and rote complaints about sexism and misogyny (spawning its own hashtag, naturally), it's the macro view of this forum that leaves me disgusted.

The most dispiriting thing Wednesday night was the grim view of the world the candidates gave Americans, with their relentless focus on fighting and terror. That, in part, comes from candidates eager to court—some might say pander to—the military vote. There was scant optimism, reflecting the hunkered-down nature of U.S. politics since 9/11. The frontier spirit that made the U.S.—a national character trait for more than two centuries—was nowhere on the deck of the USS Intrepid, docked in the Hudson River.

More than 500,000 Americans have died on U.S. highways since 9/11. A U.S. resident is 1,000 times more likely to die in a car crash than a terrorist attack. While the federal government has succeeded in reducing the number of vehicle fatalities, few blame the federal government for the asphalt carnage. But because such deaths are an everyday occurrence, they have become part of the white noise of American life.

You wouldn’t know it from listening to the candidates, but the world today is less violent than it has been in generations. If the candidates had focused on that Wednesday night, instead of heightening fears over relatively small threats, the evening could have been inspiring, as well as informative.

With these two odious people?  Not a chance.

Trump could win

-- But I don't believe he will.  As terribly bad a candidate as Clinton continues to demonstrate herself to be, I still think she's going to hold on and win the presidency.  But it's going to be a much closer contest than it should be, and if she were running against anybody but Trump, she'd be losing.

Update: Just so there's no misunderstanding, Trump has a much better shot at defeating Clinton than Texas does of turning blue.

-- In a week where the media's focus will be on national security (which I interpret as 'who's going to drop bombs on somebody else first') there will be various war pigs trotted out in favor of their  preferred CiC ...and some snarky rejoinding to that.

[...] Clinton and Trump will participate in a joint forum Wednesday sponsored by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and broadcast on NBC and MSNBC -- their first joint appearance of the campaign.

Clinton is also bolstering her national security push with a new television ad called "Sacrifice," highlighting Trump's criticism of Arizona Sen. John McCain's war-hero status and his fight with the Muslim parents of an American soldier killed in combat.

And her super PAC, Priorities USA, is launching a $5 million ad buy in the swing states North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire on Friday with a spot titled "I Love War."

Featuring a mushroom cloud, it touts Trump's hawkish remarks about war and nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine, delivered a security-focused speech Tuesday in Wilmington, North Carolina, accusing Trump of flip-flopping on how the United States should handle the war in Iraq.

"He says whatever he feels like at any given time because you can do that when you're a TV star. But you can't do that when you're president of the United States," Kaine said.

First of all, it's impossible for Trump to love war more than Clinton.  That's not the bigger-dick  contest you might think in this case, though; baiting Trump into responding in some irrational way on Twitter to reinforce her message is, but so far he's only countering with a Pee Wee Herman-esque "I know you are but what am I".

"I just don't think she has a presidential look and you need a presidential look," Trump said of Clinton.

"I'm talking about general, by the way, she says things about me that are horrible," Trump said. "As an example, the single greatest asset I have according to those that know me is my temperament."

Yes, we're all laughing heartily.

This is simply the wrong conversation our nation ought to be having, as we are already bombing four different countries, seven if you want to include the three previously bombed during the Obama administration, and Hillary Clinton -- you know, the one with all of the vast foreign policy experience -- thinks that's too few.

I won't be watching these "Bigger Balls" contests and I hope not to have to blog about them.  But Trump might say something like "I'll just use nukes", so I may be forced to comment.  (Pro tip to Trump's debate coaches: have him prepared for the nuclear question, and make sure he answers it less hawkish than Hillary.)

The truth is that I cannot stomach the fact that -- irrespective of how small his hands may or may not be -- Trump is probably smaller than Clinton in the macho/war/genitalia length and girth department.  And that fact is precisely as repulsive as you feel repulsed having read that sentence.

Labor Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance reminds you that Labor Day is more than college football, binge drinking, and sleeping late, and offers the resources of the Zinn Education Project to use and peruse as you wish.

Off the Kuff looks at the state's voter ID outreach efforts, which began last week.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos is hardly surprised to learn about the veil of secrecy that shrouds the $2.5 million Texas Voter ID education effort.

Socratic Gadfly hears about a new idea in the newspaper biz, charging people to have candidate endorsement letters to the editor published, and rips it to shreds.

After listening to Donald Trump's white nationalist speech, CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme woke up very angry at the Republican party.  Remember the ugly, angry GOP debate audiences in 2012?  These were the special people invited to attend.  Think about Senate Republicans blocking a Supreme Court nominee, threatening the full faith and credit of the US and so very much more.

It's Labor Day, and according to (faulty) conventional wisdom, we can all begin to pay attention to the coming election, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Neil at All People Have Value says his friend Libby gets enthused by ideas. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Texas Vox posts the details of the Texas Railroad Commission candidates' forum, in Austin on September 10.

The city of Lewisville reported its 16th case of West Nile virus in mosquitoes tested there, reports the Texan-Journal.

Txsharon at Bluedaze details her white privilege at age four.

And Texas Leftist got hungry and went out for lunch after blogging about the Trump surrogate's fear of 'taco trucks on every corner'.

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

The Texas Observer's Patrick Michels writes about how a campaign to keep a Jesus sign brought discord to a God-fearing East Texas town, while John Wright reports on El Paso's challenge to the anti-trans rhetoric of the GOP.

Grits for Breakfast exposes the Democratic Party's hypocrisy on criminal justice reform.

PoliTex asks whether Ted Cruz still has the golden touch.

Steve Snyder takes a deep dive into the voter ID litigation agreement.

Megan Woolard Arredondo explores the challenge of climate change for San Antonio, and Space City Weather explains why hurricanes are strongest on the right side.

Swamplot maps where Houston's pot smokers live.

Cherise Rohr-Allegrini critiques the anti-vaccinations film Vaxxed.

Eileen Smith calls on her fellow Texans to keep Rick Perry on "Dancing With The Stars" for as long as possible.

Houstonia raises a glass to the mannequins of summer.

And Pages of Victory finally cops to his age.

Sunday Funnies

Conservative media take over Trump's campaign, look to post-election battle for soul of GOP

A lot of people don’t want to vote for a third-party candidate like Jill Stein or Gary Johnson because they believe their vote will be “wasted.” But they don’t apply the same logic to most other things in life, many of which involve setting yourself apart from the herd.

It's Labor Day weekend; time to start paying attention to the election

As some sayer of sooths will point out.  At some point.

-- A couple of fresh contenders for the crown of Daily Jackass (honestly, these two seem like the third-string players scrambling for a roster spot) include Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone with the compilation of greatest hits, and Brent Budowsky at The Hill, calling for a debate between Gary Johnson and ... Bernie Sanders.

 Two of the most genuinely pathetic pieces I have read this cycle. 

-- If you don't understand why Trump has managed to erase Clinton's large and long lead (there's a Mel Brooks/Blazing Saddles joke there) in the national two-horse race polls, just look at one thing: the incessant media coverage of his ridiculous and pathetic immigration "plan".  It's not just because Hillary's Foundation is crumbling or that her e-mail Scandal O'Day resembles a a case of herpes, it's because Trump and his minions dominate the discussion everywhere you look.  I try my hardest to ignore the daily spew but it's become impossible.  What's truly remarkable is how his surrogates manage to catapult the propaganda in the least effective way: #TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner, as if that were a bad thing.  Yes, it's hate speech and bigotry and we'll all be the worse for the experience even after he's finally gone away.  Unless he doesn't go away; consider the horror that the media asks him to comment on every single policy initiative of President Clinton's during the next four years, as they did with McCain following 2008 and Romney after 2012.

Turn him off.  Maybe our corporate teevee media will get the message if the ratings start going down, but I doubt it.

-- Vladimir Putin says he doesn't know who hacked the DNC.  And at this point, what difference does it make?

In an interview two days before a G20 meeting in China with U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders, Putin said it might be impossible to establish who engineered the release of sensitive Democratic Party emails but it was not done by the Russian government.

"Does it even matter who hacked this data?" Putin said. "The important thing is the content that was given to the public." 

"There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it," he added. "But I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this."

I believe him.  Which is more than one could say about most of what both Clinton or Trump have had to say about the matter.

I sit with Colin Kaepernick

The advancement of civil rights in this nation requires protests of this very nature -- with something personal at risk of loss to the protester, like Ali, and MLK, and Malcolm X -- and compels by force of conscience people who look like me to stand, or sit, with them.

It's called the First Amendment.  There's a reason the Founders put it ahead of the Second one, after all, and if you're a Second Amendment person but not a First one, then you're an asshole.  But just so we're clear, let's be certain that we all understand that your right to complain about Kaepernick is included within his right to sit during the anthem.

Because we also know this has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

And now... let's all STFU about this trivial matter.  But before we do, let's give the #VeteransforKaepernick the last word.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance urges support for Louisiana flooding victims -- after all, it could be us next -- as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff points out that at current levels of polling, Democratic statewide candidates in Texas have a legitimate shot at getting elected.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows Texas Republican racism, meanness and greed is behind the withholding of birth certificates to Hispanic children born in Texas.

Hearst's acquisition of nearly two dozen small newspapers circling the city of Houston points out one of the few bright spots in the industry, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs; the rise of community-based papers.

Socratic Gadfly, noting when all parties have "issues," defends Green Veep Ajamu Baraka from Swiftboating, while noting he opened himself to it by being a conspiracy theorist.

John at Bay Area Houston considers Texas House District 144 incumbent Gilbert Peña to be more stump than furniture.

Neil at All People Have Value, on walkabout in Cincinnati, posted a photo of a cicada on the door of the bar he was closing down.

And Stace at Dos Centavos eulogizes Latino music legend Juan Gabriel.

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

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

The Schulenburg Forty-Eighter has some resources and events listed for those who wish to be active in opposing the fossil fuel industry's latest work-around for the stalled KXL pipeline.

Politifact Texas rates Sean Hannity's claim that "all of Texas is conservative, except for a little bit of Austin" as False.

The Urban Edge takes note of Houston's growing Muslim Latino community.

"Give and you shall receive", Texas politicians tell contributors, in a aggre-post at the revitalized PoliTex blog (at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram).

The Austin Chronicle posits nine reasons why Donald Trump came to Austin, and the Texas Observer's 19th "Texas Miracle" podcast talks cocks, Glocks, and Trump.

The Bloggess celebrates technology in parenting and friendship.

Grits for Breakfast calls for decarceration and closing prisons to reduce TDCJ's budget.

TFN Insider's guest post is from a Tyler rabbi, who writes about his -- and other non-Christian -- children's experience in the public schools, and the TSTA Blog reminds us that campus miracle workers can only do so much with limited resources.

And Better Texas Blog eulogizes Nelda Laney, wife of former statehouse Speaker Pete Laney.

Sunday Funnies

Don't tell anyone, but there will be two better choices on your ballot ...

Trump still flailing, campaign still failing

-- He cannot speak intelligently about his immigration plan's "softening".

Donald Trump on Thursday night insisted on CNN that his recent comments about immigration reflect a "hardening" of his stance, but the Republican nominee refused to directly answer questions about his position on deportation.

"I don’t think it’s a softening," Trump told CNN's Anderson Cooper when the host noted that Trump actually said there could be a "softening" of his policy on deportation. “I’ve had people say it’s a hardening, actually.”

Despite the fact that he does not demonstrate a working knowledge of his campaign's core issue, that response might have been TMI, given Trump's propensity for sexual entendre'.  (This list is only up to date through June; his most recent comment mentioned Hillary's celebrity support as "not very hot".  It does not appear as if he was referencing the male celebrities.  I can't wait to see what he says when someone tells him today is Women's Equality Day.  Oh, and thanks to Seth Meyers for the inspiration to write this paragraph.)

Update: PolitiFact actually fact-checked Trump's claim with barely any naughty tongue-in-cheek that I could discern or even infer (the definition of 'hot' they use is 'popular', and not 'sexy'), and found it to be Mostly False.

Throughout the interview, Cooper attempted to clarify Trump's stance on deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants, but with no success.

When he first asked Trump if he had a change of heart about deporting all undocumented immigrants, Trump launched into a rant about building a wall and said that he will give more details on his plan in a week. In addition to building a "great wall," Trump said he'll use "tunnel technology" and "all sorts of e-verify."

Trump reiterated that he will deport the "bad" undocumented immigrants, but suggested that he doesn't have much of a plan beyond that.

"After that, we’re going to see what happens," he said.

Trump dodged the question again when Cooper asked if there would be a path to legalization.

"You know it’s a process? You can’t take 11 at one time and just say, ‘Boom, you’re gone.’ We have to find where these people are," Trump said in response.

He put himself in this position.  Being asked questions he doesn't know the answer to should be familiar territory for him; certainly his being vague and defensive about the questions is old hat for the rest of us.  But his base isn't noticing the hypocrisy, and something on the order of 35-40% of the nation's voters like it just like that.  It's more than 50% of the voters in Texas and several other southern and mountain western states.

I'm so old I remember when people carried beach sandals, i.e. "flip-flops" to the Republican National Convention, and wore Band-Aids on their chins with purple hearts colored on them.  Either a lot of conservatives have died since 2004 or the nation's collective IQ has gone up a few points.  I'm guessing both, causatively, though some days it barely seems like it.

-- Trump's new campaign manager Steve Brietbart Bannon has been found to have been charged with domestic violence in the 1990s, and also to be currently registered to vote at a home which is both vacant and scheduled for demolition.  Perhaps we have at last found the infamous Voter Fraud Unicorn in Florida, the one that Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton have been so afraid of that also lives in disguise as a chupacabra in Texas.

If you're Trump's campaign manager, is taking millions of dollars from the Russians better or worse than being a voter fraudster who beats his wife?  I report, you decide ... because the Trumpets don't give a shit either way.

Here's what bad about Trump being so incompetent, and not just for the GOP but the nation: it leaves Hillary Clinton with no competition whatsoever, and that makes her an even lousier candidate than she already is.  She's been on cruise control to the White House since the convention, and not even her own foundation issues will likely slow her down much.

Does make great fodder for the cartoonists, though.

Clinton and Trump versus the media

I cant remember another election like 2016 in which both candidates so explicitly attacked journalists & journalism. Quite a moment.

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) August 25, 2016

Oh, they still go after each other with the most trite and dogmatic of broadsides, but now that they have a common enemy ... well, now they're friends, as the saying goes.

This week's kerfuffle centers around an Associated Press Tweet that the Clinton/Democratic pushback machine seems to have determined is some kind of existential threat.  Not the story the AP filed.  The Tweet teasing the story.

BREAKING: AP analysis: More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.

— The Associated Press (@AP) August 23, 2016

Vox, Think Progress, Daily Kos and others have all returned fire denigrating and discrediting the AP for a "false", "misleading", etc. premise.  In the Tweet, not the story.  The Tweet does appear to fail on the grounds of reasonable disagreements; the definition of "meetings" and some other verification.  AP's response was to batten down the hatches, defending the details in the story ... but not so much the Tweet itself.  The Clinton campaign demanded deletion of the Tweet; the AP told them essentially to pound sand.  Maha, with the bigger picture.

The inherent conflict is, of course, that she’s accused of using her position as Secretary of State to sell favors to foreign governments and corporations and friends who donated to the Foundation. And every time some more emails from somewhere trickle out, new accusations blossom in right-wing media.

So far, however, no one has been able to document a direct quid pro quo. But again, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a problem.

[...]

Bill announced that if Hillary is elected, the Foundation would stop taking donations from foreign governments. What I hadn’t realized was that it stopped taking money from foreign governments in 2009, when Hillary became Secretary of State. But it resumed taking such donations in February 2015, which was just about the time Hillary had locked up the presidential nomination with Democratic Party insiders and money backers.

And, anyway, the foreign governments thing isn’t the only problem. What about corporations like petroleum companies that might want to influence U.S. policy?

Why couldn’t they see that could be a problem? It’s similar to the situation with Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches — why wouldn’t see have seen those might end up biting her? Why was she so determined to not release transcripts? People gripe that Clinton is owned by corporations, and this is why.

She’s gotten away with a lot this year through a combination of dishonest redirection (“Look! a Bernie Bro!”) and the fact that Donald Trump has been running the dumbest presidential campaign in U.S. history.  But when called upon to defend herself from legitimate questions and criticisms, time and time again she’s botched it.

I’ve lost track of the stories she’s given about the State Department emails, when a simple “I had a server set up that was more secure” would have sufficed, and even might have been true. More recently she tried to claim that she set up the private server on the advice of Colin Powell. Then Colin Powell denied this. Oops! On to the next excuse, I guess.

This 'pay to play' business, in whatever serious-or-not form it exists, really doesn't seem as big a deal as Rush Limbaugh's lesbian farmers, or any one of the dozen disjointed attacks on the media Donald Trump has launched -- this being the most recent one -- but because his camp is proving unable to alter the inexorable trend of this election and her camp is busy watching him self-destruct, they have resorted to having their minions look for new skirmishes to fight.

If anybody wanted to understand what's actually behind this latest Clinton scandal-not-a-scandal, David Sirota does the heavy lifting, and Jonathan Turley reminds us that the Obama administration stonewalled and slow-walked the FOIA request for three years.  But most of the responses have been along the very predictable lines of "Republicans do it too", "this is how politics works", and "she did nothing illegal".  In sum, the same excuses her lickspittles have always rejoined every time there was an ethical short-circuit on her part.  There was one creative and effective pushback, however: going after "it looks bad".  Or "optics as scandal", as the author coins it.  'The Clinton Rules' is a phrase you're going to be hearing a lot more of from David Brock's Correct the Record squads criticizing media, social and mainstream, who report on the Clintons.

Update: In an overzealous defense of Clinton, Nancy LeTourneau -- the 'optics as scandal' writer linked above -- has gone after Sirota in a very misdirected and personal attack.

Sigh.  Nobody seems to connect the purpose of Bernie Sanders's campaign and his -- oops, Our Revolution to any of this.  'Politics as usual' is pretty much the reason why so many people have and are opting out, for crine out loud.  But even Sanders has not found himself immune (as so many of his diehard believers would be shocked to learn) to the political vagaries of selling out to the status quo, as the stories preceding his -- oops, Our Revolution's kickoff last night demonstrated.

Yeah, revolution -- particularly when someone isn't exactly committed to it -- is hard work.  And especially so when it is compromised by something that smells like dead fish lying in the sun on the dock of your new lakefront summer home.  And that stench ain't optics.

Community newspapers rise

Something I've wanted to blog about for awhile, and with the silliest portion of the political silly season full upon us, now seems like a good time.  First, the business news as press release from last month, with as much of its own-horn-tooting as I could excise ...

Hearst (on July 29) announced that it has acquired the Houston Community Newspapers & Media Group from 1013 Star Communications. [...]

Houston Community Newspapers is a media group serving more than 25 local communities surrounding Houston’s greater metropolitan area with a total weekly print distribution of more than 520,000 and a digital reach of over 4 million per month to suburban Houston’s most appealing residential and business markets.

The acquisition furthers Hearst Newspapers’ reach into the Houston suburbs ...

The Houston Community Newspapers serves residents in Conroe, The Woodlands, Magnolia, Tomball, Spring, Cypress, Humble, Kingwood, Atascocita, Lake Houston, Cleveland, Dayton, Friendswood, Pearland, Pasadena, the Bay Area, Deer Park, Memorial, River Oaks, Bellaire, Katy and Sugar Land, among other communities in those areas.

Included in the acquisition are the Conroe Courier (daily) and the following 23 weeklies:

Blah blah blah.

The only area of the newspaper business that has shown growth in recent years are these smallest of the country's print publications, whose advertising revenues have not been as severely poached as have been the woolly mammoths like the Chron, and the medium- and smaller-circulation dailies like the Beaumont, Laredo, and Midland papers Hearst has owned since the mid-80's.

I read a statistic a couple years ago (which I don't feel like re-verifying this morning) that observed that the ad revenues for Google -- at something in excess of seven billion dollars annually -- was as much money as all the newspapers in the United States had collected that year.  Today we know Facebook has surpassed that mark while Google commanded $30 billion in 2014.  So in context you can see why the newspaper business has been so hammered.  Texas Monthly with the big picture:

The Greater Houston metropolitan area comprises eight counties spread across nearly 9,000 square miles, an area larger than New Jersey, with a population of around 6 million people. If it were a country, Houston would have the world’s thirtieth-largest economy. Covering such a vast metropolis has long proved a Sisyphean challenge to the city’s single major daily newspaper: the Houston Chronicle.

But help may be on its way to the Chronicle’s beleaguered newsroom. Last week the paper’s parent company, the Hearst Corporation, announced its acquisition of the Houston Community Newspapers and Media Group (HCN), a collection of 23 weeklies and one daily newspaper, the Conroe Courier.

With names like the Katy Rancher, the Atascocita Observer, and the Bay Area Citizen, the two dozen newspapers are intended to bolster the Chronicle’s suburban coverage, a goal that has historically been more honored in the breach than the observance. When Nancy Barnes moved to Houston three years ago to become the Chronicle’s editor-in-chief, she was shocked at how little attention the paper was paying to the city’s suburbs.

“It was just unbelievable to me—when I got here we did not have a single full-time reporter in the suburbs,” she said. Although the Chronicle now has a half dozen reporters focused on the suburbs, and ten regional weekly inserts, Barnes remained dissatisfied with the paper’s efforts. “It’s been impossible for me to get as many people out into the Houston metro region as I need, because we have six million people here. Every town has had enormous growth—there are 100,000 people in Pearland alone.”

The HCN papers, which have a total print distribution of 520,000 and a digital reach of 4 million pageviews per month, will finally give the Chronicle (circulation 860,000, digital reach of 134 million pageviews) the resources to match its mission as the city’s paper of record, she said. Over the next few months, the Chronicle will replace its own regional inserts with the newly acquired papers. 

One hundred thirty four million unique clicks a month averages out to about four and one-half million a day.  I am made to understand that the Chron by itself manages three million of those hits daily, which would be a factor of about three to six times their printed circulation.  That reach could be leveraged into a pretty vast, lucrative, and effective ad buy, especially if you want to attract new (which is to say lost long ago) cash flow streams like national (coupons) and political advertising.

It is the news gathering that will make the most difference long term, as Chron editor Barnes mentions above and details at the link.  The weekly town criers and village newses have a depth of reader and subscriber loyalty that essentially does not exist in any other medium; they're the only ones who publish Friday night high school football stories, to use one example, which is something every parent or grandparent who has a kid playing wants to read.  And at least until my generation makes way for the next one, that will hold.

More significantly -- and for the benefit of a recent graduate looking for a job -- is that Barnes is demonstrating a lot of influence with her New York shot-calling bosses, and if you're a young journalist who wants to make a career in the news business, or someone who wants a very fulfilling sales job, you could certainly do worse than attaching yourself to a company and a person who can see over the horizon and capitalize on market and industry trends.

So the next time you find yourself grumbling as you pick up one of those little papers in your driveway or on your lawn, take a minute and open it and read a few pages.  You might find yourself surprised at what you've been missing.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance welcomes Donald Trump to Austin this week with a collective raspberry as it presents the best Texas lefty blog posts from last week.

Off the Kuff examines which legislative races could get interesting if the poll numbers get closer in Texas.

Socratic Gadfly looks at Hillary Clinton naming Ken Salazar as her proposed transition head, and shows his long history of anti-environmental stances go far beyond the fracking that many first noticed.

Texas Republicans' war on women has cost hundreds of mothers their lives. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that this is no joke and no exaggeration.

The US Senate looks ripe to flip from red to blue, says PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Texas Vox reposts the Texas Energy Report article referencing Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton's response to Public Citizen's comments about the agency's competence as part of its sunset review.

Neil at All People Have Value has freshened the look of his blog and updated the "Pictures I Have Taken" pages.

John at Bay Area Houston has the latest news from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is that a public comment period is open on their proposal to ban pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer financial contracts.

Feeling scammed by a Houston Cadillac dealership, Egberto Willies sought and found relief from a small local auto repair shop.

The city of Lewisville is accepting applications for its next poet laureate, reports the Texan-Journal.

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

More Texas blog posts!

Honorary Texas blog-for-a-week Heat Street covered the "White Lives Matter" rally outside Houston's NAACP headquarters in the Third Ward.

Better Texas Blog examines the impact of fewer insurers in the Obamacare market.

Texas Election Law Blog took note of the state law that limited interpreters at polling places biting the dust.

Texas Moratorium Network reported the latest regarding Jeff Wood and the efforts of his family to halt his execution.

Grits for Breakfast wonders how much money the state could save if arrests for petty misdemeanors were eliminated.

Pages of Victory has the latest on the Political Revolution, with Bernie Sanders' announcement details this week.

And via CultureMap Houston, A Night with Janis Joplin starring Kacee Clanton is now performing through September 18 at the Alley Theatre.

Sunday Funnies

You will have at least two...

2017 US Senate: D-52, R-48

Still basking in the glow of last night's Green Town Hall on CNN, and not ready yet to crown another Jackass O'Day, let's check in for the first time this cycle on the latest US Senate projections.

Not burying the lede: it's a very tight contest.  Electoral-vote.com, my personal favorite, and Election Projection both give the GOP 51 states for a slim margin to hold control.  The difference in methodology is that E-v.com doesn't have any toss-ups; they jut throw the states up daily based on the very latest polling.  (Only if a poll shows a tie do they acknowledge that in their revised projection.)  They also count the Senate's two independents, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, as Democrats because that's who they caucus with.  So today they rate it 51-49 while E-P has it a more accurate 51-47-2.

Update (8/19): Note how E-v.com changes day-to-day.

Larry Sabato has it tied 47-apiece, with 6 states -- NV, IN, OH, PA, NH, and FL -- going either way.  Charlie Cook thinks it's 47-45 Republicans, with 8 tossups.

Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight.com has projections from early June that give the Ds "three to four seats", and they need four to wrest the majority away from the Republicans (on the increasingly-safe assumption that Hillary Clinton is the new president).  His latest report, still two weeks old, is more encouraging as the polling suggests that a few Senate Republican candidates are in danger of being caught in Trump's undertow.

Update (8/19): Enten's piece from 8/16, titled "GOP's chances of holding Senate following Trump downhill" eluded me, but reinforces his and (and my) premise.

Several of the links above profile the specific state races and link to polling and such.  I'm not ready to get that granular; there'll be plenty of time in September for things to flesh out a little more clearly in many of the states where it's close now.  Ohio is going right down to the wire in both the White House and Senate contests anyway.

Your interactive toy is at 270towin.com, and here's my best guess today: D-52, R-48 with NV staying blue and WI, IL, IN, PA, NH, and NC flipping blue mostly on the strength of Clinton's surge in the swing states, and AZ, MO, OH, and FL remaining red.  (Wisconsin's and North Carolina's Dems should also benefit a couple of percentage points from the court-ordered relaxation of their restrictive voter/photo ID laws, as is the case in Texas ... subject to last-gasp litigation outcomes.)

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

The real people's mandate for President Clinton will be if she has a blue Senate and a blue House to work with, as Barack Obama did in his first two years.  The crisis exacerbated by one of the nation's five largest health insurers removing itself from the state-mandated Obamacare exchanges suggests a simple fix: the public option.  But history tells us that Clinton will not fight any domestic battle she cannot be assured of winning.

Excessive gerrymandering means a Democratically-controlled House still looks just out of reach.  But due to the Trump Train's derailment, Dems are dreaming big.  Good on 'em for that, but some swift and direct action will be necessary if their dreams come true.

A public option is one thing that could make me feel encouraged about Clinton's first term.  The other would be more diplomacy and peace and a lot less war.  (I probably shouldn't dream too big.)

Stein rises, knives come out

The reason the smear got called out early is because the smear, sadly, got traction.   CNN, hosting tonight's town hall with the Green Party ticket, had to do the responsible journalistic job and report on it and the other silly attacks listed there.  But if this is the best Jill Stein's detractors -- most of them being the crappiest of conservative corporate Democrats, mind you -- can do, it's a pretty weak case against voting for her ... except in the vanishing number of swing states.  Which Texas will not be (sorry, Charlie).

What we see here with the 'cranks' and 'kooks' business is the logic dictating that Hillary just might need that 2% to carry Texas, so we'd better beat harder on the Greens.  (Two percent is about six times the amount that Stein drew here four years ago.  Democrats have a better shot at peeling off Harambe's 2%, or Deez Nutz's 3%.  I'm just saying.)

Downballot digression: throughout the Lone Star State we see the lousiest of the lousy who show on our ballots representing both sides of the conventional aisle, as we believe and as we know.  It took them over a dozen years and a few election cycles, but the TDP finally figured out that if they just fill up the all the lines, the ignorance of straight-party voting would enable them to stand the best chance of knocking the Greens off the ballot and absorb what is left of the actual left in Texas into their collective.  Consequently you have a circumstance this cycle where an appellate court candidate who is all but invisible makes a stand against the Green who got the most statewide votes two years ago, 10.45% (without a D opponent).  Neither of the two women -- Betsy Johnson (D) and Judith Sanders-Castro (G) -- are exactly favored in their respective bids for the Texas Criminal Appeals Court against Scott Walker.  No, not that one.

Scott Walker, the failed presidential candidate and Wisconsin governor, wasn't on the (Texas GOP primary) ballot. But Dallas-based criminal defense attorney Scott Walker is vying for a seat on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The Republican barely campaigned before the March primary. His opponents weren't even sure he was running, and he didn't give any interviews. But he still dominated the first round of voting, winning 41 percent in the four-person race. Many credit that to his recognizable name; voters who make it that far down the ballot sometimes pick a name that sounds familiar. But Walker sees it differently. He told The Texas Tribune (after he won the runoff in May) that he spent "a lot of time praying about this election."

“I believe God heard my prayers," he said. 

Glowree Be!

So watch the CNN town hall tonight whether you have an open mind about an alternative to "lesser evils" or not, livestream or in the company of others, follow the Twitter feed -- look for a hashtag like #GreenTownHall or something similar -- and laugh at the putzy snark attempts by Democrats who can only win something every four years (fortunately for them it's the big enchilada; you know, "SCOTUS" and all that), then try to imagine what it would be like electing a female president who would stave off our looming environmental apocalypse, stopped our country's all-but-endless wars, eliminated student debt by telling the Big Banks to eat it, and advanced a jobs program based on an update of FDR's New Deal.  Then ask yourself how crazy that would really be.

Why, it's almost as crazy as this.