Sunday, September 13, 2020

Sunday "Truther" Funnies

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Saturday, September 12, 2020

Week-ending Lone Star Lefty Wrangle

The most distressing news of the week:

Luby’s, the beloved Texas cafeteria that had spent years trying to rebuild its niche in a crowded marketplace for fast-casual dining, announced in June that the company was up for sale. Then, today, the 73-year-old company announced that -- as no buyer has yet been found -- Luby’s will be liquidating its assets and dissolving.

Raise a farewell iced-tea toast to fried fish on a LuAnn Platter, with fried okra and mac and cheese on the side, jalapeno cornbread, and a slice of chocolate creme pie.

In election news being battled in the courts:


Bradblog helps explain.

The voting news out of Texas this week is only slightly better. First, the good news: A federal judge there has ordered state election officials to notify voters within one day after a "perceived signature mismatch" is determined on absentee ballots, and to allow voters a "meaningful opportunity" to correct the issue. Previously, after officials who are not handwriting experts decided a signature was not a match to the voter's registration application (often years old), the ballot was simply rejected without notifying voters until 10 days after the election. In other voting news from the Lone Star State, a state judge has determined that the Clerk in Harris County is in fact allowed to send out absentee ballot applications to all registered voters in the nation's 4th largest city (and surrounding suburbs). The state's Republican attorney general had sued to block the effort. I suspect he'll appeal, but we'll see.

But the war on voting in Texas doesn't stop with those two victories for democracy, unfortunately. The mayor of Houston wants to know why more than a dozen local U.S. post offices have refused to allow volunteers from the non-partisan League of Women Voters to make multilingual voter registration materials available at those facilities.


TXElects has more on the Fifth Circuit's order and state district Judge R.K. Sandill's ruling also.  And here's more from The Hill:

Texas was of particular concern to the (Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis), with the state one of the six that has refused to expand mail-in voting to allow coronavirus concerns to count as a reason to vote absentee. The panel noted that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had taken steps to sue counties trying to circumvent this. 

In addition, the subcommittee revealed that, according to documents obtained by the panel, previous poll workers in 127 out of 254 Texas counties do not plan to work elections this year, and that election officials have concerns around ensuring the safety of polling places and the ability to prevent long lines. 

“In effect, the state is forcing most voters to show up in person if they want to exercise their right to vote, which could lead to longer lines and more crowded polling sites on Election Day,” the subcommittee wrote.



With less litigious election developments ...


In the Valley today -- and the two Saturdays after -- Senator Lucio is helping a get-out-the-census drive with free barbecue.


The never-ending skirmish between the state Board of Education's right-wing freaks and the actvists who desire a sane, sensible public education for their children was renewed this week.


Sanity was defeated.


Sanity -- and sensibility -- are primed for another defeat in next year's legislative session.


Our two Senators tried to outdo each other this week. Both lost.


Why Mayor Turner tried to out-jackass Cruz and Cornyn is ... inexplicable.


He's not this stupid, so he must be a jerk. Maybe he's been conferencing with Dallas mayor Eric Johnson, with whom he served in the Lege.

That, I suppose, brings me to "Cops Behaving Less Badly Than Usual".


"Less badly than usual" is relative, especially if you have been reading Grits for Breakfast regularly.


Here's a variety of unrelated social justice Tweets.


And I'll finish with the human interest stories.

The Rio Grande Guardian marks Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15) with a well-deserved salute to the early Tejas history. The San Antonio Report has Episode 22 of 'Cabeza de Vaca: Crossing the Divide'. And Jesse Sendejas Jr. of the Houston Press wrote a fitting tribute to the legendary Heights music venue, Rockefeller's.
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Friday, September 11, 2020

White House Update: Widespread Non-Panic


In (a tape-recorded) interview with (author Bob) Woodward on March 19, the president conceded that he was downplaying the threat of the virus in public. 

 "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic," Trump told Woodward.

"Do you think there is systematic or institutional racism in this country?" Woodward is heard on tape asking the president.
  
"Well, I think there is everywhere," Mr. Trump responded, "I think probably less here than most places, or less here than many places."
  
"Okay, but is it here, in a way that it has an impact on people's lives?" Woodward asked.
  
"I think it is and it's unfortunate," Mr. Trump said. "But I think it is."
  
Woodward then asked Mr. Trump if a privileged life left him out of touch. 
  
"...And do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and put you in a cave, to a certain extent, as it put me – and I think lots of White, privileged people – in a cave and that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country? Do you see?" Woodward asked. 
  
"No," the president said. "You, you really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you? Just listen to you, wow. No, I don't feel that at all."

(Investigative journalist David) Sirota charged (as we long have) that Trump's actions constitute "a horrific crime against humanity," but he adds, "it was aided and abetted by the popular face of investigative journalism: Mr. All The President's Men himself."

"The President of the United States said something to the nation's most famous reporter, and the most famous reporter sat on that information for seven months while tens of thousands of people died," Sirota says today. "Donald Trump committed a crime against humanity and Bob Woodward drove the getaway car."



So why did Woodward sit on these lies of Trump's for seven months? Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute explains that Woodward has done this before.

Woodward’s long practice of mixing his association with The Washington Post while writing books has arisen as a point of friction before. In 2005, Woodward apologized to Post editors for withholding for two years information that a senior official with the George W. Bush administration told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame.

[...]

“There is no ethical or moral defense of Woodward’s decision to not publish these tapes as soon as they were made,” tweeted John Stanton, the former Washington bureau chief for BuzzFeed. “If there was any chance it could save a single life, he was obligated to do so. Bob Woodward put making money over his moral and professional duty. Even if you don’t believe in service journalism or that we have an ethical duty to speak truth to power and expose wrongdoing, even if all you care about is scoops, this is an abject failure. It’s just gross profiteering off death and misery on the part of Woodward.”


The only conclusion I keep reaching -- whether it is Big Pharma and the hospitals bankrupting people to death while paying Democrats to stand with Republicans in opposing Medicare for All ...


... to Nancy Pelosi, representing San Francisco, CA, cracking wise about the "new green whatever" as the skies over her city turn blood red from wildfires promulgated by climate change ...


...to the once-upon-a-time-noble journalist Woodward, who made his bones forcing a corrupt president out of office for a "third-rate burglary" and some money-laundering, now holding back a reveal that might have saved peoples' lives so he could sell another book just before an election -- democracy in this country has been irreparably shattered by capitalism.

-- It's crine ass shame that all this still isn't enough to get me to vote for Joe Biden. I'm sick of this performative bullshit.


-- So the Donks want to bray some more about Russia, Russia, Russia.


-- They're also spending more time, money, and effort trying to kick Howie Hawkins off the ballot than they are trying to help their feeble candidate get elected.


(Shortly after this Tweet by Sarandon, the Biden camp updated the page.)


-- I'm also undecided; I cannot choose between Howie and Mark Charles.


Not certain I could vote for Amy McGrath if I lived in Kentucky. I already can't vote for MJ Hegar, and they're basically the same thing. It's Charles' thought that counts here, and not mine.

Will have a week-ending Lone Star Roundup before the Funnies on Sunday.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2020

The Weekly TexProgBlog Wrangle


With the best blog posts, Tweets, and leftist news from around the Great State, the Texas Progressive Alliance is really hoping that cool front makes it all the way down here.

The biggest political fight at the moment isn't Trump versus Biden or Cornyn versus Hegar ...


... it's whether Texans will be able to cast their November ballots in a manner of their choosing, and not Ken Paxton's.


Kuff is trying to follow the back and forth of the Republican attempts to prevent Harris County from sending vote by mail applications to all its voters.

Voting isn't the only thing Texas Republicans are suppressing.


With so much demonstrable incompetence you would think that prominent Republicans funding the campaigns of Republican elected officials might be complaining. And you would be right. Just not in the way you think.


“Furthermore, as we learn more about COVID-19, we now know that elementary and middle school-aged children are practically impervious to it; even high schoolers, who bear a slightly higher risk than younger students, are relatively safe when compared to adult cohorts,” the letter states. “The scores of daycares and summer camps that have been operating in Texas are further evidence of this fact.

“We will harm children far worse, therefore, by keeping schools closed than by reopening.”

Although the tone throughout the letter remains respectful, the names listed at the bottom may be sending a louder message.

In all, more than 100 Texans are named, a list that includes a wide-range of influential individuals, such as mega donor Farris Wilks to iconic ballplayer Lance Berkman.

[...]

A name that really stands out, however, is Ray Washburne, a member of President Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

To curb the spread of COVID-19, Abbott shutdown bars and cut restaurant occupancy -- a decision that has drastically impacted thousands of Texas business owners, including Washburne.

Washburne, a restaurant owner in Dallas, recently appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

“Running a restaurant at 50 percent is absolutely ridiculous,” Washburne said during the show. “If you go to a restaurant and every other table is seated and you need to go to the bathroom, you’re walking by every table in the restaurant. It makes zero sense.”

Washburne adamantly stated that: “We have to open up the economy.”

When Carlson asked Washburne what message he would give his governor, Washburne said: “Open up.”

“People need jobs,” he said. “They need to support their families.”

Carlson went on to say Republicans are intimidated, “maybe even your governor,” to which Washburne replied: “They are very intimidated, and they need to understand that they don’t need to cower to the liberal left.”

And the Texas Signal reported on state Republicans putting a quiet end to public redistricting hearings.

So apparently there were more important things for the TXGOP to be doing, such as rallying the base with bus tours and boat parades.


Therese Odell, daughter of a military family, cannot hold back her fury at Donald Trump's words about people who serve in the armed forces.

Not to be outdone by Trump in the "Republicans Behaving Badly" category ...


Meanwhile John Coby at Bay Area Houston was glad to see a racist assistant Attorney General get fired for his bigotry.

That's just a small sample of the Pachys' woes from the past week or two. Like the Donks, their younger voters are trying to tell their older voters something, but the senior set isn't listening.


No place is this generational dynamic better illustrated than the (mostly unspoken, certainly under-reported) tension between Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.


Hidalgo is collecting huzzahs as the D's rising star.


No error, Judge.

The latest COVID numbers in the state:


Dr. Peter Hotez gives a dozen reasons why he's worried about releasing a COVID-19 vaccine through an emergency use authorization (EUA).

Here's the latest environmental updates:


And the recent developments in police reform and criminal justice.


Grits for Breakfast gives the backstory on how Austin's budget cuts for police came about. Dallas Mayor Erik Johnson is resisting his police department's overtime hours reductions but presses ahead with reducing the bureaucracy at City Hall.

In noteworthy requiems:

D Magazine eulogizes its founder, Wick Allison.

Socratic Gadfly had three "critical" RIPs of people in political, cultural and social news recently, most recently with Green Party activist Kevin Zeese, then before that with heterodox anthropologist and economics critic David Graeber and first with secular humanist leader Ed Brayton.

And let's close out with some human interest stories.

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