The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance-- those members situated along the Gulf coast, at least -- really feel the pain Floridians are experiencing this morning from Irma.

SocraticGadfly offers up a trio of Harvey-related thoughts related to possible future "big ones." Would an Ike Dike be a massive military-industrial complex boondoggle? Can Houston and Harris County do anything different on evacuation ideas? And does greater Houston, like some other disaster-prone areas, simply have too many people living there?

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is angry with the previous head of Houston flood control and the current pollution helpers.

Dos Centavos wants us to think about undocumented immigrants as something other than cheap labor for rebuilding after disasters.

jobsanger profiles the four Texas Republican Congressmen who voted against federal assistance for Harvey victims.

Texas Vox, the blog for Public Citizen, kicked off its Texas Climate Change Tour in Austin.

Family feuds are the most fun to watch, especially when you're not in the family, laughed PDiddie at Brains and Eggs as he popped more corn.

Neil at All People Have Value said Democrats really need to move on from the Sanders/Clinton primary fight. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

The Lewisville Texan Journal reports that the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission is suing Denton County over allegation of gender pay discrimination.

Off the Kuff looked at the hopefully temporary reinstatement of the voter ID law as it goes through the appeals process.

And Nick Anderson, previously the Houston Chronicle political artist and now drawing for Texas Monthly, sums up what merits a special session for Greg Abbott and what does not.

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Today is also the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorists attacks, and we solemnly pause and remember the lives of the victims lost on that day sixteen years ago.

In other disaster-related news, Houston Matters reports that aftershocks from the 8.1 magnitude earthquake that leveled the Mexican city of Juchitan continue to hamper relief efforts there.

An Associated Press account reveals that more than two dozen storage tanks holding crude oil, gasoline, and other contaminants ruptured or otherwise failed when Harvey slammed into the Texas coast, spilling at least 145,000 gallons of fuel and spewing toxic pollutants into the air.  The environmental calamity left behind by Harvey will be the most difficult cleanup of all (where it manages to occur, that is).

Texas Standard asks: will those displaced by Hurricane Harvey return to the Texas Gulf Coast?

Better Texas Blog talks fighting hunger after Harvey.

The Texas Living Waters Project will work to find innovative flooding solutions for the next hurricane.

The TSTA Blog cheers the selection of John Sharp as statewide rebuilding (post-Harvey) czar.

Offcite curates a few hurricane think pieces, including a NYT op-ed which uses a phrase familiar to Jill Stein supporters as the premise for rebuilding the nation's coastal regions.  An excerpt:

Environmentalists and scholars have sometimes called this a “green New Deal” or “environmental Keynesianism.” We should invest in science and public education to train the next generation of engineers who will build safer homes and infrastructure. (President Trump promised us infrastructure but, just weeks before this storm, rescinded an Obama-era regulation that required structures built with federal money to take sea-level rise into account.) We should expand and enhance programs that make adaptation to climate change possible for ordinary Americans, helping them to retrofit their homes or relocate to safer ground.

We should plan recovery and rebuilding projects that address local poverty and exclusion, rather than line the pockets of developers. We should commit expenditures to the kinds of projects that mitigate climate change, like clean energy and public transportation. And we should strengthen our safety nets so that when the next storm’s victims are picking up the pieces, they are not also worried about job insecurity, rising health care costs and precarious retirements.

Space City Weather points out that Houston is already pretty dried out, and going to get drier.

Michael Li shows the proposed remedial Congressional maps.

Grits for Breakfast sees a rare moment for bail reform.

Michael Barajas at the Texas Observer took note of Trump’s nomination of two lawyers, Jeff Mateer and Matthew Kacsmaryk, from the First Liberty Institute -- a far right Christian advocacy organization -- to vacant federal judge seats in Texas.  The reaction from LGBTQ groups and civil rights activists was swift.

“First Liberty Institute has used anti-LGBTQ policies to blatantly vilify our families and neighbors for two decades,” Equality Texas said in a Friday statement. “By nominating associates of this hate group, the president is using his office in an attempt to ensure policies will be created and spearheaded to advance anti-LGBTQ discrimination in employment, housing and places of business all under the guise of protecting religious liberties.”

Kathy Miller of Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for church-state separation, called the nominations “a clear signal that President Trump intends to make our federal courts the place where civil rights go to die.”

Their nominations must still be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Last, Texas Moratorium Network announces that the 18th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty is scheduled for October 28 at the Capitol in Austin.

Sunday Evening Funnies

Sunday Morning Funnies

There will be a Sunday evening collection as well.  Too much tooney goodness not to share.

Family fights are the best fights

Although it looks to me like only one side is doing the fighting.

Prominent Democrats are increasingly riled by attacks from Bernie Sanders' supporters, whose demands for ideological purity are hurting the party ahead of the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election, they say.

But it’s not just the outside agitators that Democratic lawmakers, operatives, and activists are annoyed with: They’re tired of what they see as the senator’s hesitance to confront his own backers, either in public or through back channels.

Tensions boiled over recently when a handful of Sanders loyalists bashed freshman Sen. Kamala Harris — a rising star in the party and potential 2020 hopeful — as an establishment tool. Democrats were also rankled that other prominent Sanders allies said support for single-payer health care should be a litmus test for candidates.

In response, Democratic senators and outside groups have begun telling Sanders and friendly intermediaries that if he wants to be a leading figure for Democrats ahead of 2020’s presidential election, he needs to get his supporters in line — or at least publicly disavow their more incendiary statements.

A lot more at the link.  I keep hoping Bernie will decide he'd rather be a leader in some party to the left of the Democrats.  This vitriol follows closely on the heels of Hillary Clinton's latest book, which tears all the scabs off the wounds (which really had not scabbed over all that much).

The late night guys have, as usual, diagnosed the Democrats' problem.

Late-night host Seth Meyers has a message for former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton: Don't blame Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for your loss.

"Hillary Clinton, don't blame Bernie because Donald Trump called you names," Meyers said on Wednesday. "I promise you, he was going to do that anyway."

His comments come after Clinton in her new book blamed Sanders for doing "lasting damage" to her campaign and "paving the way" for President Trump's attacks against her as "Crooked Hillary."

Meyers also questioned why Clinton was "wasting pages" in her book on Sanders. The Vermont senator is "not a fan," he added, before joking Sanders wouldn't pay $17.99 for a book.

"Bernie is not the reason you lost," Meyers continued.

"You know how I know that? You beat Trump by 3 million votes. If you want to blame something ancient, blame the Electoral College."

Meyers also went after Clinton for saying Sanders's ideas were nothing more than pipe dreams.

"I'm not sure if you've been paying attention, but pipe dreams paid off great in 2016," he said.

"Trump won by saying he was going to build a wall. You should have said you were going to build a stairway to heaven or an escalator to Mars that you were going to make the Martians pay for."

There is now an unprecedented opportunity to pull together Democrats and liberals, Meyers said.

"The best way to do this is to get the people who voted for you and the people who voted for Bernie on the same page," Meyers said, adding that Sanders helped make Clinton a better candidate.

"You know, the candidate who beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes," he added.

This was the night after Jimmy Kimmel was a bit less direct and little more wry.

“I was just thinking to myself this morning, ‘I would love to relive that magical election of 2016,'” he began. “It’s like reading a book about why the Titanic sank while you’re sitting at the bottom of the ocean.”

Kimmel pointed to an excerpt of the book where Clinton referred to James Comey as a “rash FBI Director.”

“Although in fairness to Comey, he only got that rash after being forced to shake hands with her husband,” he quipped.

He then brought up Clinton’s attacks on her primary rival Bernie Sanders and wondered why a non-Democrat like him would run for the Democratic nomination.

“It’s a very good question… that should have been asked two years ago,” Kimmel said. “I guess it didn’t come up til now.”

Kimmel then showed a ‘trailer’ for her book “It’s That F**ker Bernie’s Fault,” which promotes the retelling of her “astonishing defeat” and why “despite overwhelming odds, everything collapsed.”

“At least she’s taking responsibility,” Kimmel added.

Folks, you know I gave up on this Democratic Party a long time ago.  It seems obvious to me that they won't be winning anything in a midterm election cycle, which would probably be the case even without the joy of all this division (certainly in Texas).  I'll just ask what few friends I still have that voted for Hillary, think the Russians stole the election, believe Bernie is the reason for all this infighting, etc. a couple of questions.

What do you think a US Senate with a filibuster-proof majority in 2018 is going to do with Trump's agenda?  What do you believe a Texas Legislature is capable of if Joe Straus is not Speaker of the Texas House?

The answer in both cases is: worse than you can ever imagine.

I am of the opinion that 2018 is already lost.  And 2020 is very probably the last chance Democrats will have to get their shit together.  Somebody is going to have to swallow their pride and stand down, though, and I don't expect it to be the Sandernistas.  Good luck and all that to everybody involved.  I'll be surprised if we don't see the blame game played out for several more years.