The Weekly Tinkle Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance would like for everyone to be able to pee in peace as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff is encouraged by a surge in voter registration from people who can't wait to vote against Donald Trump.

Libby Shaw, attending a roast of Dan Patrick at Daily Kos, received a fair share of push back when she suggested GOP primary voters defaulted to Trump because most of them understand that they've been conned by the GOP establishment. They lost because they serve billionaires. Voters finally figured it out.

SocraticGadfly looks at the Texas Supreme Court's school finance ruling and says Texas GOP voters have reaped what they have sown.

Dos Centavos expresses outrage about the administration's latest immigrant raids, and hopes that Bernie Sanders delegates to state conventions will hold fast -- and hold the Clinton delegation's feet to the fire -- on deportation issues.

A new report on fracking setback distances in Texas shows them to be inadequate, according to Txsharon at Bluedaze.

jobsanger listicles the two biggest lies Republicans tell about employment.

Egberto Willies passes along a Washington Times story about Newt Gingrich, which says that he would "probably" accept a VP slot with Donald Trump if asked.

Texas Vox says that if you are concerned about a chemical explosion similar to the one in West happening in your town, consider writing to the EPA.  Because our state government simply isn't going to do anything.

The difference between murder and manslaughter is "I didn't mean to", observes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Neil at All People Have Value sees a lot of value in everyday life. You should as well. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

And John Coby at Bay Area Houston eulogized Carl Whitmarsh.

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

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

Chris Hooks at the Texas Observer writes about the Lyin' Ted in winter.

The WAWG Blog has a few questions for millennial Sandernistas, on behalf of boomer ones.

Grit for Breakfast asks: What does an Austin cop have to do to get charged with official oppression? Something worse than Tasering a confused, homeless man lying on the ground?

Lawflog passes on the latest from Booger (aka Robertson) County, which details a few liars, thieves and sore losers.

Lone Star Ma highlights the 10th of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): "Reduce inequality within and among countries."

Space City Weather salutes the Addicks and Barker reservoirs for their stalwart flood mitigation.

The Great God Pan Is Dead updates us on the Rokudenashiko case.

Phyllis Randolph Frye explains what the law really says about bathrooms.  And Cody Pogue would like us all to get over our bathroom issues already.

John Nova Lomax questions Houston ISD's school renamings.

BOR frets that the combination of Zika virus and anti-abortion laws could have a large and negative effect on public health in Texas.

Everything Lubbock takes note of the Hockley County game warden who got a laugh out of a woman reporting a chupacabra sighting there.

And Pages of Victory shares some of his unpopular notions.

Obama's eight years of war

Nobel Peace Prize winner and war president.

President Obama came into office seven years ago pledging to end the wars of his predecessor, George W. Bush. On May 6, with eight months left before he vacates the White House, Mr. Obama passed a somber, little-noticed milestone: He has now been at war longer than Mr. Bush, or any other American president.

If the United States remains in combat in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria until the end of Mr. Obama’s term — a near-certainty given the president’s recent announcement that he will send 250 additional Special Operations forces to Syria — he will leave behind an improbable legacy as the only president in American history to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.

Mr. Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 and spent his years in the White House trying to fulfill the promises he made as an antiwar candidate, would have a longer tour of duty as a wartime president than Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon or his hero Abraham Lincoln.

The greatest fear every future president will continue to have in the post 9/11 period, at least for the next 25 years or more, is being held accountable -- politically or otherwise -- for not "keeping Americans safe" from terrorists.

'My primary job is to keep our country safe' is a line repeated in various iterations often by this president.  It has translated into the extrajudicial killing of American citizens via drone for the crime of posting inflammatory YouTube videos, the crafting of so-called heroes like Chris Kyle who shoot down women and children with Oswald-ish precision via long-range sniper rifle, and by responding to theocratic guerilla warriors in five separate countries -- not counting whatever we're doing in Syria -- with an Israeli-like hamhandedness that only breeds more of the same.

America's former top diplomat under this president -- the person whose mission is to avoid war and bombings and such -- has already promised to unilaterally strike Iran if she is elected president.  She wanted to "big-stick" China, and that was too much for Obama.

(Former SecDef Robert) Gates laid out the case for diverting the (aircraft carrier) George Washington to the Yellow Sea: that the United States should not look as if it was yielding to China. Clinton strongly seconded it. “We’ve got to run it up the gut!” she had said to her aides a few days earlier. The Vince Lombardi imitation drew giggles from her staff, who, even 18 months into her tenure, still marveled at her pugnacity.

Obama, though, was not persuaded. The George Washington was already underway; changing its course was not a decision to make on the fly.

“I don’t call audibles with aircraft carriers,” he said — unwittingly one-upping Clinton on her football metaphor.

When I read people writing about Hillary's strength in foreign policy, I wince.  (That's a cringing liberal admission for my friend J. R. Behrman.)  'Foreign policy' these days -- if you're not including global trade pacts that hollow out the middle-class -- means more war: more drone killings, more long-range jets bombing more places, more special forces boots on the ground infiltrating, patrolling, shooting and dying.  A more technological and precise imperialism beyond longbows, or blankets laced with smallpox, or mustard gas, or P-51 Mustangs and B-29 Superfortresses, or even Fat Men and Little Boys, but psychopathic imperialism nonetheless.

His managing continuous war over the course of his time in office has occasionally replaced the failure to use his political capital to get universal single-payer done, in terms of my greatest objection with this administration -- and the next one -- but at the moment it's the perpetuity of this most exceptional American legacy I dread the most.

Sunday Funnies

The difference between murder and manslaughter

is "I didn't mean to".   (IANAL)

Even if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motives for having a homebrew server were far from nefarious, "mistakes were made" and somebody must -- and will -- be held accountable.  There's eventually going to be a fall guy/gal, and today my money's on Cheryl Mills, known as the only person who says 'no' to Hillary.

Sandy Berger -- Bill Clinton's former NSA advisor -- paid a $50,000 fine, performed 100 hours of community service, lost his security clearance and his law license, all for stuffing classified documents down his pants.  David Petraeus similarly got his charges reduced to a misdemeanor, with a $100,000 fine and two years of probation for sharing classified info with his mistress/ biographer.  (He was not demoted in rank after some deliberation of that consequence by the former secretary of the Army and secretary of defense Ashton Carter, and receives a $220,000 annual lifetime military pension.)

Both cases angered investigating agents because of the leniency of punishment.

From what I can tell and from what Clinton's IT professional Bryan Pagliano may or may not be saying as a result of his immunity from prosecution, Hillary very likely is -- like Berger and Petraeus -- criminally responsible for the "mishandling of classified data".  The conversation about what is, what is not, and/or what should be classified data or not is a word-definition distraction that nobody, not even the most sycophantic of Clinton supporters, is indulging in any longer.

As we know, people who are guilty of a crime are not always prosecuted for it in the American judicial system, and whether she is eventually indicted or not, whether misdemeanor or felony if so, is to be determined by the conclusions and recommendations of the FBI's investigation, director Comey, AG Lynch, and I suspect even Barack Obama himself.

(Insert "Law and Order"'s DUNH-DUNH sound effect here.)

If Guccifer is telling the truth -- and can provide evidence that backs up his allegations -- the only question I have left is: what should Clinton's penalty be for mishandling classified data?  For the record I hold no illusions that Andrew Napolitano is serious when he says the Russians are coming with 20,000 of her emails.

My final concern about this matter is when we will have the conclusions of the investigation made public: before November... or after.

Kindly note that I draw no conclusions about political consequences, though that will be at the forefront of everyone's reaction.  Once we know what we do not know today, whenever that may be.

(Too dramatic?)

Update: Hillary's got a long and tortured road ahead, no matter the outcome of the email business.

Scared, bickering Democrats update

-- It's a Breitbart production, but that's not going to draw as much ridicule as it should.

“Clinton Cash,” premiering at the Cannes Film Festival on May 16, is a “devastating” documentary, according to MSNBC, alleging Bill and Hillary Clinton used the Clinton Foundation to “help billionaires make shady deals around the world with corrupt dictators, all while enriching themselves to the tune of millions.”



The film, written and produced by Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon and directed by M.A. Taylor, is based on the New York Times bestselling book of the same name (subtitled “The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich”) by Peter Schweizer.

MSNBC got an “exclusive first look” at the documentary, which is strategically set to hit U.S. theaters on July 24, one day before the start of the Democratic National Convention:

“The movie alleges that Bill Clinton cut a wide swathe through some of the most impoverished and corrupt areas of the world — the South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, India and Haiti among others — riding in on private jets with billionaires who called themselves philanthropists but were actually bent on plundering the countries and lining their own pockets.

“In return, billionaire pals like Frank Giustra and Gilbert Chagoury, or high-tech companies like Swedish telecom giant Ericsson or Indian nuclear energy officials — to name just a few mentioned in the film — hired Clinton to speak at often $750,000 a pop …”

Yes, it's very, very harsh.

One of the most damning follow-ups to Schweizer’s most startling accusation — that Vladimir Putin wound up controlling 20 percent of American uranium after a complex series of deals involving cash flowing to the Clinton Foundation and the help of Secretary of State Clinton — was printed in The New York Times.

Like Schweizer, the Times found no hard evidence in the form of an email or any document proving a quid pro quo between the Clintons, Clinton Foundation donors or Russian officials. (Schweizer has maintained that it’s next to impossible to find a smoking gun but said there is a troubling “pattern of behavior” that merits a closer examination.)

But the Times concluded that the deal that brought Putin closer to his goal of controlling all of the world’s uranium supply is an “untold story … that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.”

“Other news outlets built on what I uncovered and some of that is in the film,” Schweizer, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, told NBC News Tuesday. “To me the key message is that while U.S. politics has long been thought to be a dirty game, it was always played by Americans. What the Clinton Foundation has done is open an avenue by which foreign investors can influence a chief U.S. diplomat. The film may spell all this out to people in a way the book did not and it may reach a whole new audience.”

-- As you might have predicted, Clinton surrogates have lashed back ... at Bernie Sanders.

Pressure is mounting on Bernie Sanders to end his campaign for president, with Democratic Party leaders raising alarms that his continued presence in the race is undermining efforts to beat presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump this fall.

[...]

"I don't think they think of the downside of this," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a Clinton supporter who hosted the 2008 meeting that brokered post-primary peace between Clinton and then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

"It's actually harmful because she can't make that general-election pivot the way she should," Feinstein said. "Trump has made that pivot."

Clinton, her aides and supporters have largely resisted calling on Sanders to drop out, noting that she fought her 2008 primary bid again Obama well into June. But now that Trump has locked up the Republican nomination, they fear the billionaire businessman is capitalizing on Sanders' decision to remain in the race by echoing his attacks and trying to appeal to the same independent, economically frustrated voters that back the Vermont senator.

"I would just hope that he would understand that we need to begin consolidating our vote sooner rather than later," said New York Rep. Steve Israel, a Clinton backer and former chief of efforts to elect Democrats to the House. "Democrats cannot wait too long."

Though Clinton has for the past few weeks largely focused her rhetoric on Trump, campaign aides say the two-front effort hampers their ability to target both Sanders supporters and Republican-leaning independents that may be open to her candidacy. It also means she's spending time in primary states, rather than battlegrounds that will decide the general election.

'Please do not moan to me about Hillary Clinton's problems'. 

While they can talk up Clinton, Sanders' determination to contest every state remaining has kept Obama and Vice President Joe Biden largely on the sidelines, benching two of her most powerful advocates.

"It all sort of slows the takeoff of her general-election campaign," said Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a member of the party's liberal wing from a perennial battleground.

Sanders is having none of it, frequently telling the thousands of supporters who attend his rallies that he still has a narrow path to the nomination.

"Please do not moan to me about Hillary Clinton's problems," Sanders said in a recent interview with MSNBC. "It is a steep hill to climb, but we're going to fight for every last vote."

Coffee's brewed, Berners.

Yet there is no question his campaign is on its last legs. His fundraising dropped by about 40 percent last month and he's laid off hundreds of staffers. Biden said this week he "feels confident" that Clinton will be the nominee. Even Obama is pointing out the realities of the delegate math, which puts Clinton on track to capture the nomination early next month.

By every measure, Clinton is handily winning the Democratic contest. She has won 23 states to Sanders' 19, capturing 3 million more votes than her rival along the way. She has 94 percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination, which means she could lose all the states left to vote by a landslide and still emerge as the nominee — so long as all her supporters among the party insiders known as superdelegates continue to back her.

Oh, let's go ahead and catch a little moaning, shall we?

White House officials believe Obama has the ability to coax some die-hard Sanders' fans into the Clinton camp, particularly young people and liberals. But if he moves before Clinton officially captures the nomination, he risks angering those voters and undermining that effort.

Clinton faces a similar calculus. While her international expertise could attract foreign policy-focused Republicans and suburban women, highlighting her record on those issues now might encourage Sanders to resurrect attacks on her vote in favor of the Iraq war.

"When his rhetoric takes a sharper tone against her, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. "I know that can be used as ammunition."

Okay, that's all the moaning I can take.  How about you?

-- Anonymous Congress critter, allegedly a Democrat, is about to spill the beans on exactly how corrupt Congress has become.

A forthcoming book called The Confessions of Congressman X, purportedly written by a sitting (and rumored to be Democratic) congressman, promises to be an anonymous revelation of everything terrible you've always suspected about America's representatives in Washington. Choice quotes about Congress include:

• "Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in the power and special-interest money that's lavished upon them."
• "My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything."
• "Fundraising is so time consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on. Like many of my colleagues, I don't know how the legislation will be implemented, or what it'll cost."

But voters aren't spared his poison pen, either:

• "The average man on the street actually thinks he influences how I vote. Unless it's a hot-button issue, his thoughts are generally meaningless. I'll politely listen, but I follow the money."
• "Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of government and how it works."
• "It's far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification."

The Confessions of Congressman X is published by Mill City Press, a vanity imprint in Minnesota, and will be available on May 24.

Sounds a lot like Alan Grayson to me.  I'd love to see Grayson in the Senate (he's running against the Bluest of Dogs, you know) and I'm just sorry Harry Reid won't be around next year to get his ass whipped by an actual fighting progressive.

Let's try to focus on the easy job, Dems: flipping the Senate.  Screwing that up really ought to be more difficult than losing the White House to Trump, shouldn't it?

TXGOP convention has secession, bathroom wars on agenda

And maybe a Trump drop-in (see below).

DALLAS - On the day before Texas Republicans were poised to open their biennial convention where delegates will pick the hottest issues they believe their Red State government should address, longtime party member Bert Keller quickly ticked off his top five. He would empower conservative, Christian principles in government; abolish firearms licenses; secure the border; cut taxes; and limit access to public restrooms for transgender people.

"Talk is cheap. It's time for action," said the Dallas family-business owner and tea party activist who said he plans to vote his conscience as an alternate delegate at the statewide meeting. "This party represents the real grass roots, and that's what the grass roots want - action."

A few steps away, Houstonian Jeanette Porter, wearing a red jacket and GOP scarf, shook her head.

"Standing up for conservative values is one thing. Crazy issues are another," she said, arguing briefly with Keller on the gun-license and restroom issues. "I vote to get away from the people who have been sniffing paint."

God, I wish I had said that.  Looks like Ms. Porter picked the wrong weekend to try to kick the habit, though.

To some, the state's Grand Old Party appears a bit fractured in its focus, as the ultra-conservative tea party influence becomes the mainstream and as party leaders seek to retain their hold on Texas politics, even as shifting national trends suggest that some of the GOP's hard-line stances on immigration, same-sex marriage and voter ID may not be playing as well as they once did.

Examples abound.

While Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton have blasted transgender restroom mandates in recent days to the applause of many Republicans, others see little urgency in the issue.

While Gov. Greg Abbott is pushing a national campaign for a Convention of States to reframe the Constitution to give states more power over the federal government, tea party factions argue Abbott's plan would needlessly risk a disastrous liberal rewrite.

Even though it stands no chance of approval, the issue of whether Texas should secede from the United States, a plank that some activists want in the state party's platform, appears set to get a hearing before the full convention.

Even the race for party chairman has taken a nasty turn, with a mailer supporting Houston lawyer Jared Woodfill accusing current state chair Tom Mechler of Amarillo of "supporting a homosexual agenda."

"The Homo Agenda" is as old as Betty Bowers (who's been in assisted living for a decade now, but was once a dead ringer for state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst).  Charles has gotten his heavy bag work in already on the state chair race, so I'll throw some roundhouse kicks at a few other 'highlights' of the weekend coming up.

Robert Gelman, a onetime Cruz supporter, stood in a corner of the convention hotel Wednesday surrounded by Trump "Make America Great Again" campaign signs and agreed that getting a Republican elected president is the only thing that counts. Several delegates booed the signs as they passed Gellman.

"This has been a love-fest for Ted for the past four years, since he got elected to the U.S. Senate, and this year will be a welcome-home, job-well-done reception for the man who we respect as a true movement conservative," said Gelman, a Fort Worth businessman and self-identified tea party realist. "Ted led the fight to change government. Republicans are doing that. Donald Trump will do that. We must stop the Obama-crats. They are ruining the country."

It has failed to seep in over the past 3.5 years that Obama isn't running for president, isn't taking their guns, isn't a Kenyan Muslim socialist.  Horse's asses led to water and all that.  But hey, some of those in attendance may actually boo Trump -- let's keep our Twitter eyes peeled for whether that happens, if he should indeed show up -- so I suppose we should count that as progress.

Dan Patrick is prepared to general the War on Peeing and Pooping in Public, which will be 2016's rallying cry for Republicans from sea to shining sea.  Trumpeting 'freedom' while performing some kind of inspection on those who suffer the unfortunate consequence of having to urinate or defecate away from home isn't a battle to be left on the fields of North Carolina.

(I really wanted to save that one for Sunday.)

Ted Cruz still hasn't endorsed Drumpf; will that happen at his 'hero's welcome' today or tomorrow?  Will some intrepid reporter inquire of Governor Abbott (with regard to the West fertilizer plant explosion now being classified as a criminal act) whether his 2014 advice for citizens to "drive around" and ask about ammonium nitrate stored near their homes is still recommended?  Can Rick Perry and Judge Roy Moore light a fire under the Texas Eagle Forum's Christian soldiers that's hot enough to get Jared Woodfill elected chairman?  Will the secessionists' resolution carry the day?  And if so, can they please hurry up and GTFO of the USA before November, so that the state's electoral votes won't count in this year's presidential election?

(Also yesterday), the Platform Committee of the Texas Republican Party voted to put a Texas independence resolution up for a vote at this week's GOP convention, according to a press release from the pro-secession Texas Nationalist Movement. The resolution calls for allowing voters to decide whether the Lone Star State should become an independent nation.

For all you Berners saying you'll stay home on Election Day: this is what happens when you do.  You have a fresh chance coming up on the calendar to avoid being ruled by your inferiors.

Boy, that's a lot of bullshit that's going to have to be blogged.  Documenting the Texas conservative atrocities is a damned dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

Revolution news update

-- No More Mister Nice Blog:

I foresee a big uptick in attention for Jill Stein, starting as soon as Sanders concedes. What the hell else will Salon do when Sanders is out of the race? I'm certain that H.A. Goodman and Walker Bragman will instantly switch over to being tireless Stein supporters. And why wouldn't the mainstream media reach out for yet another Everyone-hates-Hillary story? On the right, I expect the Murdoch media to begin encouraging her campaign -- I'm guessing we'll see Stein regularly on Fox in the fall.

Look at the tightening Clinton-Trump poll from Reuters, and consider Thomas Edsall's observation that Trump does best in online polls, a sign that he may have support from many voters who don't want to acknowledge their Trump leanings to in-person or telephone pollsters. (Mike the Mad Biologist has already referred to this as the "Trump effect," a mirror-image "Bradley effect.") This race could get ugly.

"Could"?

-- The 2014 New York gubernatorial candidate with some searing truth.

Jill Stein's Green Party campaign for president ought to be the first stop for Sandernistas who refuse to vote for corporate Clinton. Stein will give voice to popular demands and movements and help shape political debate during the election. But more than anything, the Stein campaign is a party-building campaign. It's about securing ballot lines that can be used in future local elections for municipal, state legislative and congressional seats. It's about creating campaign committees that continue after the election as local Green parties.

Local independent left candidates can win. Kshama Sawant has shown that in her Seattle City Council races. Over 150 Greens have shown that in cities and towns across the country.

When even critics contend that the Greens should focus on state and local races, well... this is exactly where the county parties should move forward.  Now, not in mid-November.

Ballot access barriers, winner-take-all elections, private campaign financing and inherited two-party loyalties are real obstacles to building a left third party. But the idea that they are insurmountable is just wrong because viable third parties have been built and independent candidates have won. The abolitionist, populist, and socialist parties from the 1840s to the 1930s garnered enough support to really affect American politics. Greens, socialists, and independent progressives, including Bernie Sanders himself, have won office in recent decades. What's been missing since the 1930s is a left that understands that independent politics is the road to power and change. Most of the self-described left today practices dependent politics. It depends on the corporate-sponsored Democrats to enact changes.

Sanders' campaign has revealed there is a mass base for left party that is ready to be organized. His campaign shows that millions are ready to vote for what public opinion polling has shown for decades--that there is majority support for progressive economic reforms like single-payer, progressive taxation, tuition-free public higher education, and climate action. Sanders' campaign also shows that millions will fund a campaign for these reforms with small donations at a level that can compete with the candidates of the corporate rich.

If this doesn't happen (and it didn't happen after Jesse Jackson's bid in 1988, Howard Dean's in 2004, and Dennis Kucinich's in 2008) then ...

If the Greens are going to be the vehicle for an independent left political insurgency, they will need to reorganize as a mass-membership party with membership dues and local branches for sustainable self-financing, democratic accountability, and grassroots dynamism. The Greens will remain underfunded, weakly organized, and politically marginal if they continue to be organized like the Democrats and Republicans with an atomized base of voters who only have the right to vote in primaries, with no locally organized base to elect and hold leaders accountable, and with minimal funding from intermittent fund appeals.

In other words, what they have always been (in my personal experience).

There is no shortcut through the Democratic Party to building a mass party on the left. That shortcut is a dead end. Hopefully, many new activists energized by the Sanders campaign will come to the realization that road to "political revolution" for "democratic socialism" lies not inside the Democratic Party, but in an independent left party that is opposed to and starts beating the Democrats.

The peasant revolt never occurs within the castle walls.

Budweiser acknowledges failure of brand, changes name to 'America'

It was supposed to be a summer fling, but like Donald Trump's White House aspirations, it's going all the way to November.

According to AdAge, which has confirmed with company officials, 12 ounce cans and bottles of Budweiser—owned by a company based in Belgium—will now bear the brand name “America.” You can look for the change as of May 23, and expect it to last straight through summer, a.k.a. “the high beer season.” But it won’t end there! The new look will stretch onward through the election season, because why not make your rebranding as ridiculous as our presidential campaign has been.

The new tagline? “America is in your hands.”

Still not ready to drop your side-chickin' with that local craft brew, traitor?

The Washington Post notes the rebranding will be even more extensive, with Budweiser changing multiple facets of its can design for maximum patriotism:

[T]he word-heavy label would include, in all capital letters, the following: “Land of the Free,” “Home of the Brave” and “From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters this land was made for you and me.” Don’t worry—there’s more. It’s topped with a diamond containing “U.S.” and a smaller “United States of America” and that is topped with the lyrics from the first four bars of the “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

"You have this wave of patriotism that is going to go up and down throughout the summertime," Anheuser-Busch InBev U.S. Marketing Vice President Jorn Socquet told AdAge. "And we found with Budweiser such a beautiful angle to play on that sentiment."

Expect some "why do you hate America" challenges from those whose patriotism can't be expressed strongly enough on the bumpers of their pickup trucks, or in a tattoo across their lower back.

I clicked on all the links but didn't find any mention of "In God We Trust", so I'm guessing there's going to be some protests and boycotts from the Religious Right's Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers Caucus.

As for me, my boycott of all things Budweiser continues unabated and unbowed.

Green presidential candidates debate today

Ongoing as this posts.  And more revolution news below.

Watching the Hawks co-hosts Tyrel Ventura, Tabetha Wallace and Sean Stone will host two live third-party presidential debates: the Green Party on May 9 and Libertarian Party on May 12.

“In 2016 it’s time the illusion of choice offered by the Democrats, Republicans, and the Washington, DC power brokers must be challenged,” Ventura said. “Thankfully, there is a cable news channel in RT that has the courage to show US citizens and the rest of the world that there are more than just two brands of politics within the United States.”

Green Party candidates Jill Stein, Kent Mesplay and Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza Curry will face off on Monday, while Libertarian Party candidates Darryl W. Perry, Austin Petersen and Marc Allan Feldman will debate next Thursday. Both debates will cover foreign policy, domestic issues, and electoral reform.

The debates will air on RT America from 4 pm to 6 pm Eastern time. You can also watch them on the RT America YouTube page.

“It is all but illegal to participate in US politics outside the twin titanic business parties. A majority of US citizens are disgusted with the status quo and want something new,” Mesplay said. “By nurturing real discussion and debate, RT America reveals an insistent international movement of polite dissent: the Green Party. Such visibility emboldens would-be voters who want a viable ‘third party’ in the United States.”

RT is “breaking the two-party stranglehold on debates and beginning the open discussion the American people are clamoring for,” Stein said in a statement.

She added that she’s excited for the Green Party debate, which she sees as “a step towards real democracy and an inspiration for the millions of Americans who are ready for a new politics that puts people, planet and peace over profit.”

America does indeed need four parties, particularly in 2016 with record-breaking distaste for Clinton and Trump.  Here's more thinking outside the two-party box.

YOU DECIDED to run a campaign independent of the two mainstream parties. Given all the excitement that Sanders has generated, many people who are very critical of Clinton are hoping it might be possible to reform the Democrats and turn them into a truly left-wing party. Even those who don't hold out much hope to reforming the Democrats will be pressured to vote for Clinton as the lesser evil in order to stop Trump. And you will, no doubt, be called a "spoiler." How do you respond to these arguments?

THERE HAS been a long and valiant effort for many decades to reform the Democratic Party. But the party has a built-in kill switch that it created in 1972 after George McGovern won the primaries as a peace candidate.

They changed the internal party system to insure that grassroots candidates would never be elected again. This included creating the superdelegates in order to empower the party insiders to call the shots. The superdelegates are about 30 percent of the total needed to win the nomination, so it's a very powerful firewall. Likewise with the the Super Tuesday primaries. So it's a doomed struggle, right from the outset, to try to reform the party.

You only have to look back to the era of the civil rights movement to learn this lesson. That movement was as powerful a movement as we have seen in modern history and, together with the labor movement, which was much more powerful than it is today, there was an attempt to organize what was called "realignment" inside the Democratic Party.

It did succeed in getting the conservative Southern Dixiecrats out of the Democratic Party, but that's as far as it got. It completely floundered on the effort to create a social-democratic party out of the Democrats. Why was that?

Specifically, it was the war in Vietnam that made it essential to be an imperialist or pro-war if you wanted to have the "credibility" to critique the Democratic Party. This basically shot that reform movement -- in the foot, you could say! Because at the end of the day, the Democratic Party is funded by war profiteers, predatory banks and fossil-fuel giants. So this is not where we are going to create that party of revolution. It is fundamentally a counterrevolutionary party.

About the spoiler effect, I'll say a few things. First of all, just to put it to rest. It's a myth that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the presidential election in Florida in 2000. It was the U.S. Supreme Court that stopped the vote re-count, which Gore would have won had it continued.

But beyond that, the problem is that millions of Florida Democrats didn't come out to vote for Gore. Nader's votes in Florida were a tiny fraction of the Democrats who either voted for Bush or stayed home. Blaming Nader is a self-serving fear campaign that the Democrats use to silence their opposition.

Blaming Nader or other third-party candidates is a strategy to intimidate people into a politics of fear that tells you to vote against what you fear instead of voting for what you believe. But in fact, the politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of.

We can list all the reasons people are told to silence themselves and vote for a lesser evil candidate: we were afraid of jobs going overseas, the climate meltdown, expanding wars, the attack on our civil liberties and on immigrant rights, expansion of the prison state, etc. Look around. This is exactly what we've gotten -- much of it under a Democratic White House with two Democratic houses of Congress.

Take the Wall Street bailout. Obama did that with a majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress in 2009. That's when that all occurred. So the politics of fear delivers what we're afraid of. The lesser evil is not the solution. It merely paves the way to the greater evil. It ensures that the Democratic Party base gets demoralized and doesn't come out to vote. So the greater evil wins. We've seen this time and again.

-- All of this news about Stein has attracted the attention of David Brock's troll brigade, and they have swarmed.  As Clinton tacks harder right, picking up disaffected Republicans and their fat checks, we'll see more of this.

Fun.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance mourns the passing of a Houston Democratic titan, Carl Whitmarsh, as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff ponders career options for Ted Cruz.

SocraticGadfly takes a snarky look at possible Hillary Clinton Cabinet nominees.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos learned that Rick Perry is looking for a job. She thinks Ted Cruz should be looking too. In another line of work: A Tale of Two Texas Republican Losers.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is shocked to hear that a Texas cemetery refuses to serve Hispanics. Surely, they are happy Trump is the nominee of their party.

It was a disgraceful Cinco de Mayo for Drumpf, as he made a fool of himself with a taco bowl and a Hispander. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs hoped he used the coupon for free breakfast tacos on the 6th, because he certainly seemed drunk on the 5th.

As the Sanders campaign moves towards the Democratic convention in July, Neil at All People Have Value found a freedom-loving Texan supporting Bernie. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

In spite of all the polling that show Bernie Sanders defeating Trump handily while Hillary Clinton struggles against the Republican nominee, Ted at jobsanger believes just the opposite.

Texas Vox covered the Democracy Awakening protest and rally in Austin weekend before last.

Burnt Orange has their podcast up about the continuing saga of Uber and Lyft in Austin, and CultureMap asked if Houston was next.

And the Lewsville Texan Journal is expanding with the "help wanted" sign out for a journalist.

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

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

Jonathan Tilove at First Reading wonders whether Rick Perry's official portrait at the state capital will be wearing a Trump button.

Texas for Public Justice's Andrew Wheat, writing for the Observer, sees the big money dogs abandoning scandal-ridden AG Ken Paxton.

The Texas Tribune and Ballot Access News report on the independent candidate who won a plurality of the vote in the 120th Texas House special election to replace retiring Ruth Jones McClendon.

The Great God Pan Is Dead tells a NSFW story about art, obscenity, and the jailing of Rokudenashiko for making a kayak in the shape of a vagina.

Houston Tomorrow is looking for its next executive director.

Make West Texas Great Again documents (and complains about) the rise of the "suburbatarians" in rural parts of the state.

Andrea Grimes invites out-of-staters who cheer the idea of Texas seceding to come here and help us do the work needed to turn our state around.

Progress Texas rounds up the best "Ted Cruz drops out" reactions from Twitter. (WARNING: You will never be able to un-see the image at the top of this post. Click over at your own peril.)

Raise Your Hand Texas hopes you thanked a teacher last week.

And in a touching Equality Texas video for Mother's Day, a lifelong Texan shares her joys -- and fears -- of raising her transgender son.

Sunday Funnies

Good news for Hillbots

Not those crapholes who do the posting at Blue Nation Review... all of them.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has shifted 11 states on its election scorecard toward Democrats since Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“This has been an exceedingly unpredictable year,” the analyst said. “Although we remain convinced that Hillary Clinton is very vulnerable and would probably lose to most other Republicans, Donald Trump's historic unpopularity with wide swaths of the electorate — women, millennials, independents and Latinos — make him the initial November underdog.”

Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin were all shifted from toss-up states to leaning Democratic. The “solid Republican” states Missouri and Indiana were downgraded to “likely Republican.” New Mexico is now solidly Democratic, and North Carolina is a toss-up after leaning Republican.The analyst also shifted Arizona and Georgia from likely Republican to leaning Republican.

Cook also moved one House race toward Democrats: Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which was considered solid for Republicans and is now classified as a toss-up race.

Maine’s 2nd District was the only reclassification that favored the GOP, going from solid Democrat to likely Democrat. The Report classifies congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska because they are the only two states that don’t award their Electoral College votes on a winner-take-all basis.

The shifts is good news for Clinton and down-ballot Democrats, who are increasingly seeking to tie their GOP opponents to Trump.

Take a look again at the Electoral College map that Politico posted earlier this week that showed Hillary as a prohibitive favorite already.

Now flip three of the states in yellow above that Cook lists -- CO, FL, VA-- to blue and you have Clinton with 298 EC votes, or 28 more than enough to win.  If NC is a true tossup and she collects OH by tapping Sen. Sherrod Brown as V-P, we're into LBJ landslide territory.  (There's a very good reason that Julián Castro's bubble is suddenly losing air, and FWIW Brown has pretty clearly said -- more clearly than people in his position usually say -- that he's not interested.)

I still think Clinton picks a Latino -- Tom Perez seems to me to have moved ahead of Castro just lately -- to seal the deal, especially in the wake of this past week's TacoBowlgate.

And as long as we're rumor-mongering running mates, Sen. Joni "Make 'Em Squeal" Ernst checks all the boxes for Drumpf: she's looney-tunes conservative, she has a vagina, and she brings swingy Iowa with her.  The Republican nominee is going to need all the help he can get, and she's the mostest in a general election that is (or should be) over before it begins.

Discounting the V-P prognostications above, only Vermont, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, and maybe North Carolina are up for grabs.  That's a lot of states where Americans who can't stand the Republican or Democratic nominees can vote for a Libertarian or a Green for president... without being guilted for doing so.

So the two-horse race is really over unless Hill screws it up pretty badly.  That could happen, but the chances of anything damaging coming out of the FBI investigation into the use of her private email server -- specifically to avoid FOI requests -- grow slimmer by the day. 

My feet are sound asleep; what about yours?

Feliz Seis de Mayo

-- Is it safe to say Mexico is having a yuuuuuge week?  From Houston Texans' tackle Duane Brown's #MexicanMeat to "I love the Hispanics", it was indeed a special Cinco.

-- Let's count the ways Drumpf fucked it up:

Should a presidential candidate really be hawking his name-brand taco bowl to constituents?

Should Trump really be saying “Hispanics” when Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday?

Should Trump even be trying to win over Mexican voters on Cinco de Mayo, an event that’s not celebrated in most of Mexico and serves primarily as a day for Americans to party and drink tequila?

Should Trump be celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a crispy taco salad -- a product invented in Texas?

Should he even be claiming Trump Tower Grill has the best taco bowls when Yelp gives the restaurant a mere 3.5 stars out of five? (Update: Also the Tower Grill does not even sell the taco bowls.)

Why is Trump eating that taco bowl next to a photo of his ex-wife Marla Maples?

Haven't we seen enough bad holiday tweets from #brands? This we assume is just the beginning from Trump. Lest we forget, one of his campaign promises is to end the War on Christmas.

It's going to be a riotous six months for comedians and snarky bloggers, but a seriously bad time for our nation and democracy generally.  So I'm kinda torn.

-- Did you hammer a few too many margaritas yesterday?  Taco Cabana has your coupon for hangover breakfast tacos that's only good this morning.  And hopefully you didn't consume any of the rot-gut at some of these fine Houston establishments.

-- Tony Buzbee, Rick Perry's lawyer, got his drink on a couple of months too early.  He'll be spending some of his Memorial Day weekend getting ready for his DWI trial.

More on Drumpf's racism and misogyny in the pipeline, but I need to go pick up some tacos.

Requiem for a jerk

Despite the booger-eating, the associations with the worst religious freaks he could wrangle, the unintentional physical trauma he has put his wife and children through, and even all the good things he has done for Democrats... I'm going to miss making fun of the big lug.

Maybe I'll drive past his house and throw eggs, pitch toilet paper up in the trees or something.

Ted Cruz is back home in Houston.

He and his wife Heidi visited and thanked loyal volunteers and campaign staff Wednesday evening at Armadillo Palace.

Close to a hundred people packed into the restaurant for the homecoming. Cruz mingled with the hometown crowd that was filled with many of the grassroots supporters that have been key to the rise of his political career.

"It's wonderful to be home," Cruz told KHOU 11 News as he was leaving the event.

Now he and his family are getting back to somewhat of a normal life. They didn't leave the restaurant with a driver or a motorcade, Heidi drove them home.

For the love of a Jesus Christ that she believes in and I don't, I hope she packs her bags and goes back to New York and Goldman Sachs before she has another nervous breakdown.

As for Ted, the Libs are beckoning.

Libertarians seeking their party’s presidential nomination say Sen. Ted Cruz should endorse them rather than Donald Trump, who rebranded the Texas Republican “Lyin’ Ted” before forcing him out of the GOP primary with a crushing victory in Indiana on Tuesday.

Cruz hasn’t said if he will endorse Trump, whose campaign trail attacks included retweeting an unflattering photo of the senator’s wife and repeating allegations that Cruz’s father was with Lee Harvey Oswald before President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

On Tuesday, Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral.”

The vicious GOP primary, the Libertarians hope, will push Cruz to endorse them and deliver his socially conservative, Constitution-toting base, which they view as rational for a variety of policy reasons as well.

“Ted Cruz has always been brave and stood up to the establishment of his own party, even when it came to shutting down the government, so I wouldn’t put it past him,” says Austin Petersen, one of three candidates seeking the Libertarian nomination at a Florida convention this month.

“With Donald Trump winning, I might be the only pro-life, pro-Constitution candidate on the ballot,” Petersen says. “[Cruz has] always shown the courage to buck the leadership of his own party. It would be shocking, but I don’t think it would be out of character for him.”

New Mexico’s former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson also is seeking the Libertarian nomination, which he won in 2012 before collecting more than 1 million general election votes. Johnson is doubtful Cruz would endorse him but says it would be welcome.

“That would be huge, that could be the quantum leap we need, the attention we need,” says Johnson, who was supported by 11 percent of responsdents in a recent hypothetical match-up against Trump (at 34 percent) and Democrat Hillary Clinton (at 42 percent) from Monmouth University.

“There is an opportunity here,” he says.

Golden.  Then again, he could return to Senate and become a... something besides a pariah.

As Cruz returns to Washington, does he maintain his firebrand, anti-establishment approach — which has inspired his base support but rubbed many of his colleagues the wrong way? Or does he take a more collegial tack, seeking to build upon some of the mainstream GOP support he received in recent weeks?

Because right now, GOP consultant Bill Miller pointed out, Cruz is a “dead man walking in the Senate.”

Former House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, recently called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh.” Former President George W. Bush reportedly said last year, “I just don’t like the guy.” And Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who ultimately endorsed Cruz, has joked about Cruz being shot on the Senate floor.

“If he chooses to run again, he would need to soften his approach,” said Denton County GOP chairwoman Dianne Edmondson.

A kinder, gentler Ted.  We can all dream, I suppose.  See Kuff for his take.

DefeaTED

He went down swinging.

Cruz craps out; Sanders surprises pollsters again

At least he's good at shutting things down.

Moments before Ted Cruz publicly ended a campaign for president that had lasted more than a year, he stood backstage and thanked his closest friends, supporters and advisers for their help and support.

Some sat at round tables. Conservative commentator and TV host Glenn Beck stood and watched. A bar table covered with Starbucks cups and an ironing board with an upright iron stood off to the side.

When Cruz finished speaking, the group of about 50 people applauded — several of them wiping away tears — and Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, walked away from them, looking down, and shook his head.

Cruz’s speech to a group of a few hundred devoted followers from the main stage minutes later was met with disbelief and anguish.

“From the beginning, I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory,” Cruz said. Murmurs rose in the audience.

“I’m sorry to say,” Cruz said — and cries of “No, no!” rang out — “it appears that path has been foreclosed.” This brought an even louder “NO!”

As Cruz announced that he was suspending his campaign “with a heavy heart,” a girl of about 12 began to sob. Her father stood nearby with his hand over his mouth and said, “What are you doing?”

Cruz sought to reassure his followers inside the Grand Hall Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza hotel. “Hear me now: I am not suspending our fight for liberty,” he said. His father and mother, divorced 20 years ago but standing next to one another on this night, stood behind him.

A gaggle of Cruz’s campaign staff stood 20 feet from the stage, many of them red-eyed. After Cruz finished his speech, he began to greet supporters in the front of the crowd, but then abruptly returned backstage after just a few moments, apparently too emotional to continue.

His supporters were left to pick up the pieces and to ponder their choices now that businessman and reality TV personality Donald Trump stands alone as the likely Republican nominee and the only alternative to Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Here's the best thing that happened last night for Clinton.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I might vote for Hillary,” said Jason Winters, 40, a machinist from Crawfordsville, Ind. “She’s a criminal. She’s a murderer. But she’s better than an authoritarian dictator.”

I'm at a loss for words, but I'll pick up the pieces and go on. 

Bernie Sanders triumphed over Hillary Clinton in Indiana’s open primary Tuesday, boosting the grassroots candidate’s argument that the party’s superdelegates should flip their support to him in July’s Democratic convention. 

Sanders spoke to thousands of supporters in Louisville, Ky., before Indiana’s results were in. He called for an end to closed primaries and criticized Clinton for her ties to Wall Street and paid speeches to Goldman Sachs — a sign the heated rhetoric on the Democratic side shows no signs of cooling down.[...]

Sanders continues to trail Clinton by hundreds of pledged delegates and faces an extremely difficult path to close that gap. And Tuesday’s win doesn’t     propel Sanders very far; he and Clinton will roughly split Indiana’s 83 Democratic delegates because his victory was narrow. But the win fuels the senator’s argument that he should keep fighting until the end and creates a headache for Clinton, who has made a hard pivot from frontrunner to presumptive nominee. “I think we can pull off one of the great political upsets in the history of the United States,” Sanders said in a press conference late Tuesday night.

I'm still thinking he can't, but I won't hide my glee at how angry his pushing ahead makes Hillary''s crew.  Once again, the polling failed.

Only a handful of polling outfits were surveying voters ahead of the Indiana Democratic primary—but none of them saw a Bernie Sanders win coming.

The RealClearPolitics polling average for the state had former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton up by just under 7 percentage points as of this morning. But minutes ago, the TV networks began to call the race for the senator from Vermont.

FiveThirtyEight says NBD, but they have been wronger than anybody this cycle, and they only aggregate everybody else's polls, not conduct one.  That means everybody who bet +7 or more on Clinton were the biggest losers.  Those people should stay away from the racetrack this Saturday.

More on the reality Nate Silver is denying here and here.  One excerpt:

There is not a current, publicized investigation underway to figure out why the polls are almost always off, in a way that predicts that Sanders will not do as well as he ultimately does.

But since the polls have consistently predicted that Sanders will earn fewer voters than he goes on to win, the following questions arise.

If the latest RealClearPolitics poll says that Sanders beats Trump nationally by 14 points, does that mean that Sanders would actually beat Trump by more than 14 points, given that this polling source is one of the ones that has been wrong by underestimating Sanders?

If, as the Washington Examiner is reporting, Sanders is beating Clinton in national polls by two percent, and in the Indiana contest the poll was off by 9 percent, is Sanders really beating Clinton by 11 percent nationally?

No one has officially answered these questions. But Bernie Sanders has won another primary — Indiana — a “surprise” to those who continue to rely on polls that consistently under-predict Sanders’ performance. 

Food for thought.  I just don't believe Bernie is going to get to test this polling theory in 2016.  Hillary is a little more than likely to get enough delegates out of California in one month to end the conversation, finally.

But until then, there's going to be more chuckling from the left of the left and a little more teeth-grinding and cursing under their collective breath from the right of the left.