Massa insanity

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance would like to thank the Academy by presenting it with this week's roundup.

TXsharon went undercover this week to map methane plumes in the Barnett Shale: "Stealth" measurements contradict Shale Gas industry safe air claims, new technology shows. Big Gas is so BUSTED! And it's all reported on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

This week on Left of College Station, Teddy covers all of the results of the primary elections including the surprising defeat of Don McLeroy in the State Board of Education District 9 Republican primary. Left of College Station also covers the week in headlines, and this week will begin coverage of the local municipal elections.

The Texas Cloverleaf provides a Denton County and Texas primary roundup.

Texas Vox celebrated last week as the student governments of two Texas rivals, UT and A&M, passed "green fees" to support sustainability initiatives on campus.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson takes a first look at the general election race for governor in Texas: White vs. Perry is a toss up.

Neil at Texas Liberal offered up a video of him reading the first ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution in front of the Beer Can House in Houston. This is a house made out of beer cans.

Off the Kuff looks at primary results in the SBOE races.

Bay Area Houston thinks Harris County Democrats are going to get LaRouched in the upcoming Democratic judicial primaries.

Justin at Asian American Action Fund Blog warns those outside Texas to stop being federal snobs and begin to concern themselves with the State Board of Education.

WhosPlayin is watching all hell break loose in Flower Mound, as a group circulating a gas drilling permit moratorium petition is blown off by Town Council, and a political organization in the town tried to have the local school district call the police on them if the group used school parking lots for signature gathering.

Over at TexasKaos, libby shaw writes that Senator Cornyn has found himself a hero: Senator Jim Bunning. Yes that Bunning, the one who scores political grandstanding points at the expense of the unemployed. Read the rest here: GOP Senator to the Jobless and Uninsured: Tough S$it. Cornyn defends him.

Sunday Funnies

Reading the tea(bagger) leaves

-- First let's note Governor MoFo's pollster's contention that the 45% of early GOP primary voters in 2010 -- who had no prior Republican primary history -- put the governor over the top in Tuesday's election.

Now personally I believe that's hogwash. People in Texas who have a voting a history, just not a Republican one, turned out in the tens of thousands to vote for Rick Perry?!? LMAO.

There thousands of people with no prior Republican voting history who voted in the Republican primary, all right, and they were Democrats who voted for Kay Bailey ... and Debra Medina. Yes, we have our share of low-information voters too, and they're almost as ignorant as any conservative. Almost.

Baselice wants you to believe that TeaBaggers are legion, especially in Texas. That's partly right; they're just a whole lot smaller in number than he is spinning. I can't look at the full story on QR but that is ludicrous on its face. This is more of the Perry team trying to drive a narrative; don't fall for it. Moving on ...

-- Incumbent Texas Railroad Commissioner Victor Carillo laments his loss to David Porter ...

" ... an unknown, nocampaign (sic), no-qualification CPA from Midland residing in Giddings filed on the last day that he could file while I was waiting in Abilene to bury my dad. He has never held any elected office, has no geoscience, industry, or legal experience other than doing tax returns for oil and gas companies. ...

Early polling showed that the typical GOP primary voter has very little info about the position of Railroad Commissioner, what we do, or who my opponent or I were. Given the choice between “Porter” and “Carrillo” -- unfortunately, the Hispanic-surname was a serious setback from which I could never recover ...

Carrillo is, of course, precisely right and one of the commenters has a suggestion for him:

Message to Mr. Carrillo - why would you stay in a political party that votes out a qualified person just based on their surname?!?

If ever there was a poster child for the racist attitude that pervades the Republican party, to the point of kicking out a qualified incumbent with a hispanic surname, this is it.

Please join the Democratic party. This will not happen to you there!

But -- at least in Harris County -- that suggestion's closing point is also inaccurate. Hispanic judicial candidates on the Democratic ballot lost to non-Latinos by the bushel.

Everybody knows what this is all about, and you don't have to be a regular consumer of FOX or local talk-radio to get it.

The Texas Blue has an even better suggestion:

If (Carillo) is truly interested in supporting the candidate with the most oil & gas experience, he and all Texans should cast their votes in November for Democratic candidate Jeff Weems, a former roughneck and energy lawyer. I don't know about y'all, but I'd rather see an oil & gas person do an oil & gas person's job rather than leave it up to a candidate whose most germane qualification is that he lives near oil & gas infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Porter has hired former TRC member Barry Williamson -- a former finance chair for the RPT -- to raise money for him. I posted a lengthy bit of data on Porter here in January that tells you money is going to be the least of his concerns.

And look for more discussion on this surname topic, here and elsewhere.

--  Kuffner ...

Meanwhile, Harris County Tax Assessor Leo Vasquez suffered the same fate as Victor Carrillo.

Don Sumners won the Republican nomination for county tax assessor-collector Tuesday, ousting incumbent Leo Vasquez on his promises to continue the anti-tax crusade that characterized his tenure as county treasurer in the 1990s. 

Sumners campaigned on a slogan of "I was Tea Party before Tea Party was cool."
As treasurer, he publicly criticized Commissioners Court for increasing the tax rate and was an outspoken opponent of a bond measure that approved hotel and car rental taxes to fund football, basketball and baseball stadiums.

I think teabagging has been pretty cool among certain segments of homosexual men for ... what, decades maybe? Centuries possibly?