Monday, February 14, 2022

Valentine's Day Voting Massacre Wrangle


The elephant in the room, at the polling place, in Austin, in D.C. ...


(W)hat to do about a political system where a small and extremely conservative portion of the population is basically picking the leaders for the rest of the state? In theory, it’s supposed to be a self-correcting, but that’s reliant on general election voters restoring balance when either party goes too far astray. (Texas Politics Project director Jim) Henson says the problem is Texas Democrats.

“The weakness of the Democrats as a balancing factor in general elections has gone from being a temporary condition to almost a structural feature of the political system right now,” he said.

This means if the Democrats don’t start winning statewide offices, then Texas politics will shift even further to the right. Another solution is for more Republicans, the moderates in the party, to start showing up to vote in their primary.

Or maybe more Democrats could vote in the GOP primary.  Or perhaps the Earth will burn this pestilence off its face and a new species, one more concerned with empathy and self-preservation, will take its place in a few million years.

Since I'm not voting in the primary for the first time in my life, I guess I'm betting on the latter.

It's a grim state of affairs for the Donks.  Just check the latest polling from the TexTrib and UT, out this morning.


Some will say it's just another data point, but the trend is crystal.  And if Beto is a drag at the top, then everybody else is in trouble.

It's been twenty years since John Cornyn and Rick Perry swept the "Dream Team" of Ron Kirk and Tony Sanchez, and during that time blogs rose and fell, Twitter and Facebook were born, but Texas remains the same, except further to the right.  Dan Patrick upended David Dewhurst, Sid Miller replaced Todd Staples, Greg Abbott moved up from the SCOTX to the OAG and then the Governor's Mansion, and the Lege went full-bore nuts.

Meanwhile Tex Dems focused on "a few targeted races", like SD-10 (Wendy Davis, Konni Burton, Beverly Powell, some Republican next) and HD-134 (Martha Wong, Ellen Cohen, Sarah Davis, Ann Johnson).  When they could win a seat in Congress it inevitably was an oil-soaked Blue Dog like Lizzie Fletcher replacing some putrid conservative like John Culberson, with the shitlibs cheering 'progress'.

I spent a decade of the best years of my life in that losing fight, and another decade half in and half out of it.  No More.  I'll try to find some Donkeys to vote for in November, but I'm absolutely certain they won't make their choices easy for me.

This ain't it either, for reasons that should be obvious.  I note that no member of the Texas Progressive Alliance has mentioned this event as of yet.


More about this rally from Austin Sanders at the Austin Chronicle and Adam Serwer of The Atlantic, and from Fiorella Isabel and the DSA rally that followed.  Continuing in this vein:


Giberto Hinojosa has been an unqualified disaster for the TDP, but electing Kim Olson to replace him would end the party (which is not such a bad thing to consider, IMO.  Let the Texas Greens have the urban regions and the Donks can get their asses whipped in the boondocks).  Candidly I see the next chair being Carroll Robinson.  I've been wrong before, though.

Moving on to Tex-Cons behaving badly (a topic I blogged extensively last Thursday).


If you're going to spend as much time talking about newspaper endorsements as Kuffner does, you ought to acknowledge the obvious: they're the conservatives behaving badly here.  In running for a seat he doesn't live in, Wesley Hunt is just following the example set by James Cargas.

Shifting to ecological updates and leading with the ones having to do with the lingering effects of the freeze from a year ago (last week's post on the freeze that saved Abbott is here; and the rest of my environmental posts are here).


And a few criminal and social justice posts (a larger Wrangle of these appeared last Friday).


And my soothers (more were posted last week).

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Sunday, February 13, 2022

Sunday 'Soup to Nuts' Funnies

"Do you know why I pulled you over, Ms. Greene?"
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Saturday, February 12, 2022

The Calm-Me-Downs Wrangle from Far Left Texas

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The Environmental Wrangle from Far Left Texas


Flaring at Valero’s Houston refinery in Manchester sent black smoke billowing above the city’s East Side Monday morning. [...] (That) follows another flaring event Friday night (Feb.4) at the Galveston Bay refinery owned by Marathon Petroleum Corp. It too blamed flaring on a power outage. ...

Shell Chemical Company also alerted neighbors to possible flaring at its Deer Park plant Monday night, though the cause was unclear. Shell was not immediately available for comment.

Flaring events like these rain chemicals on the city’s eastern neighborhoods, polluting the air and affecting the health of sensitive groups, said Bryan Parras, an East Side resident and an organizer with the environmental advocacy organization Sierra Club.

“One of these events can exceed the permitted levels they are allowed to emit for the entire year, depending on how long the flaring lasts,” he said.

Just another day in Big Greasy.


Bruce Melton at The Rag Blog wrote a comprehensive essay about what he called the 'Tex-Ice' disaster ahead of Valentine's week, offering some survival stories about our current emergency and some new solutions to our existential crisis.  Sharon Wilson for Earthworks reminds us that methane releases are the damaging ecological impacts of Texas winter storms nobody really mentions.  Clean Technica points out the hidden costs of keeping natural gas-fired electric plants online (paying surge prices in a Uri-like event).  And Luke Metzger at Environment Texas has new research showing the role rooftop solar could have played in preventing 2021 Texas power crisis.

The last Wrangle this week has my calm-me-downs, and it will appear later today.
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Friday, February 11, 2022

The Social Justice Wrangle from Far Left Texas


Including the legal and criminal justice news, some labor updates, and a few posts marking Black History Month.


Reform Austin wants to know what the hell we're doing to public school teachers.


The Dallas County district attorney has obtained arrest warrants for two DPD officers accused of using excessive force in the same summer uprisings.


And a second top official at the TxDMV has now resigned.


Never seems to slow down with the "bad apples".


And some BLM to close.  Environmental news and calm-me-downs in subsequent posts.

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Thursday, February 10, 2022

The Freeze that Saved Greg Abbott's Bacon


We still gotta pay that Abbott tax, tho.


Let's not slight the capitalist POV.


And last, the local takes.


On the lighter side, Evil MoPac invited us to play Texas Winter Storm Bingo.
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The Far Left Texas Wrangle: Democrats and Republicans Behaving Badly


I fell behind this week, and there's just too much for one post, so I'm breaking it down into a few.  Opening with the duopoly's baddest actors, and when the fish rots, it begins at the top.


In Texas' case, such a statewide probe may be costly, with one estimate saying it could amount to some $250 million in taxpayer money. In November, $4 million was drained from the state prison system to help fund county election audits.

Maybe someone on the the call tonight will ask the SoS about this.


John Whitmire and Chris Hollins together might make for some fireworks, or they may just stick to the topic and stick it to John Scott.  ICYMI:


And in case you don't follow nonsequiteuse, she has crawled up Dean Quitmire's ass, pitched a tent, started a camp fire, and is roasting weenies for Molly Cook and her entire crew.


Passive-aggressively vicious. I love it.

This research is embarrassing the HouChron editorial board, but not nearly as much as their endorsement of the fellow who refused to talk to them.


Both the Whitmire and the Wesley Snipes Hunt endorsement are sell-outs to perceived future authority.  It's about the weakest, most disgraceful action they could have taken.


With Democrats like Ogg and Whitmire, who needs Republicans?  If you're a tuff-on-crime liberal, go vote the HGLBTQ slate.  Let Judge Bynum explain if you're not getting it.


Of course Texas Republicans have completely lost their shit, and Texas Democrats see more advantage in trying to recruit their dropouts than they do running on actual progressive policies.


Both Andrea and Kuffner climbed over the paywall to bring you the details.


And if it's Christian conservative sex scandals you're into, Shell Seas has your ticket.


Unfortunately for them, there's a lot of things that might be considered similar going on with the Donks in their primary fights.


The (Texans for Better Democrats Coalition) is made up of three progressive groups tied to organized labor: the Texas Organizing Project, Communications Workers of America, and Working Families Party. They are prepared to spend about $250,000 across the three primaries, funding field and mail programs in each one, said Pedro Lira, co-director of the Texas WFP.


Still don't understand why I call centrist Dems shitlibs?  Read the replies here.


On most issues, with the exception of the Biden administration’s border and immigration policy, majorities of the poll’s registered voters expressed preferences for policies that are to the left of those endorsed by Texas’s current leaders.

Frankly, that's schizophrenic.

Stace at Dos Centavos asks why two Latino GOPers are pretending to run for head immigration agent and why local Latino Dems haven't said anything about it.  And SocraticGadfly takes a critical look at "gotcha" social media about the not-so-great freeze, the subject of the next Wrangle.
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Monday, February 07, 2022

Thawing-out Wrangle from Far Left Texas


These pens are full.


Yes, there were outages, but it was mostly of the icy wire and wind variety.  Austin got the cobblestone frozen streets and is boiling water until tomorrow night; there were some mad truckers on I-10 in the Hill Country, but none of those things are going to tip Governor Helen Wheels' chair.  Thus Beto's message shifted to ... PTSD.


There's a fresh talking point, but O'Rourke probably doesn't want to go there.


Tough break for Beto.  He was met with derision at his rally last night in Denton County, and his supporters clashed with some counter-protestors.


I suppose that will be my segue to the Tex-Cons behaving badly.


Once again however, Texas Democrats couldn't leave the embarrassment to Team Red.


And for the record let's note that the corruption is often bipartisan.


I take it that those bloggers who focus exclusively on Houston and Harris County won't be mentioning this story, so let me remind them -- and you, dear reader -- that El Franco Lee, RIP, died in office a few years ago with a million bucks in the bank, and the biggest complaint I read was how little he did to help Democrats down the ballot in all his years on commissioners' court.

Yeah.  The corruption is also non-partisan, unless someone knows what this guy's politics are.


One last political item.


None of these three people, as it turns out (scroll down), meets the definition of 'progressive'.  But if the Congresswoman who leads the Squad is successful in adding a couple of new members, do you think they will finally be able to accomplish something?  Beyond tweeting platitudes, I mean.

A couple of COVID updates, since I haven't posted anything in awhile.


And the environmental updates.  First: there was a consequence of the freeze in Texas City.


We already knew that the TCEQ -- under sunset review -- isn't monitoring emissions before and after winter storms, hurricanes, and the like.  This bureaucracy doesn't need reform; it needs to be abolished, reimagined, and reconstituted with actual environmentalists, not government toadies.


And the social justice news: to mark Black History Month, Retro Snacking is tweeting some newspaper articles from the past regarding Texas lynchings.


Last, the calm-me-downs.

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Sunday, February 06, 2022

Sunday "Legitimate Political Discourse" Funnies


Support a disappearing craft with a subscription to a political cartoonist.

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