Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Hump Day Tex-Left Aggregation

Not to be conflated with aggravation (which could easily occur, considering all of these bad actors and their corresponding acts).




Their junior partners in dastardliness, Austin branch, strove to keep up.


It's been a very busy week at the Lege; their spring break was canceled by Winter Storm Uri and so lawmakers had no choice but to dig in on their heavy workload.  These stories suggest that we might all be better off if they had not.


RA also reports that the push to make Texas a "2nd Amendment Sanctuary" continues unabated in the wake of the Boulder, CO and Atlanta spa killings.

Texas House Bill 19 proposes to change liability laws concerning trucking companies, those who are involved in 18-wheeler accidents, and the lawsuits that result.


I would imagine that The Texas Hammer and The Texas Bulldog -- among their cohorts at TTLA -- are going to work hard to defeat this legislation.


There are new police chiefs in Austin (interim) and Houston (permanent).  Let's expect there NOT to be the same old problems.


Kim Ogg is indeed one of the very worst Democrats in Harris County.  But reformers who ran against her last year were handily defeated, because she has the HGLBT Caucus in her corner.  If John Whitmire is successful in courting their favor in his presumptive bid for H-Town mayor in 2022 2023, then the race is over before it begins, as Kuffner finally noted yesterday (remember what I said last week about him fawning over this news?  All I got wrong was the timing of his post).

There is no f'n way I will vote for Whitmire for mayor.  I'm sick to death of old white centrist Democrats running anything, and I'm especially tired of watching emasculated Lege Democrats think the mayor's office would be a great retirement gig.

To that end (sort of), one Latino Democrat in the Valley reads the writing on the wall, and one Black Dem in North Texas throws in against Ken Paxton.


He joins Galveston legal eagle Joe Jaworski in that primary.  Moving on to some climate headlines:


And since I have plenty more for a Friday Roundup, I'll close this Aggregation with a few stories that commemorate and celebrate.

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Monday, March 22, 2021

The Ketchup Wrangle from Far Left Texas

Last week I said I would post a Great State update on Tuesday and delivered on Wednesday, followed by another promised on Thursday, which was not posted then, nor Friday, nor Saturday.  As my old former blogging friend Neil Aquino used to say, "either you run the blog or the blog runs you."  The lovely spring weather and all of the coming-out events last week took precedence over following up on our miserable political representation.  If you got outside over the course of the past several days then you know exactly what I mean.

“It’s overwhelming because we just jumped back into everything so quickly. Everyone is asking you to come do this or come do that but, at the end of the day, I’m just happy to see my friends and everybody having a good time being out and about.”

Everywhere I went people had shed their masks, were enjoying the sun and each other's company, were dressed up and made up, and living with a sense of things returning to normal after a year of hiding indoors at home, scared of invisible bugs, washing our hands until they're cracked dry, and wearing sweat pants and no underwear.

Maybe that last was just me.  Not paying attention -- whether it be to COVID safety protocols or to ongoing misbehavior at the Lege -- can have a steep price.


"Election integrity", i.e. voter suppression, is how we got started this time last week.  Governor Wheels stayed busy and on point with his hypocrisy, as you know.


He and Dade Phelan did manage to cut off Dan Patrick and SB2142 at the knees, which may or may not be a win for Texans.  The session still has a long way to go, and there will be lots of things these people won't be doing anything about.


Here I'll shift focus for this first Wrangle to the more positive and happy things happening.  Reform Austin posts "Good Bill Hunting", a semi-regular series that finds the silver lining under the Dome, this week focusing on Rep. James Talarico's $70K teacher salary bill.


And with lots on all the usual topics in the funnel, I'm wrapping here with more of the feel-good before posting the snark, the bad behavior, and the just plain atrocious later.  Whenever (but soon).

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Sunday, March 21, 2021

Sunday "Everyday Madness" Funnies


Nick Anderson, who founded Counterpoint, was interviewed by Houstonia Magazine about his cartooning career post-newspapers: "(A)rtists from all political leanings are providing takes on today’s biggest headlines as contributors. Of the 18 satirists, ten -- like Anderson -- saw their jobs cut. It’s too soon to know if Counterpoint will hit it big (at the moment it has more than 170,000 subscribers), but if it does this could be a way to ensure that his art form doesn’t just die out."

Please support their work if you possibly can.
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Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Wednesday Tex-Leftist Assemblage *updates

Post promised yesterday, delivered today!  Just like Paul DeJoy's USPS.

Seriously, Offline gets in the way of Online at times, and when the plumber called to say he was free to make repairs sooner than I had anticipated, I dropped everything except the laptop and made time for him.  Update: A few things once again interfered with extending this post earlier.  More and latest finally appears below.

Life comes at ya fast, and who would understand that better than the newly unemployed Arthur D'Andrea.


He was Greg Abbott's last remaining commissioner.  Now he (we) has none.  You may ask yourself: "How did I (we) get here?"


Ah yes, the invisible hand of the free market.  The hand that Dan Patrick has decided he would like to cut off at the wrist.


House Speaker Dade Phelan doesn't care for this much guv'ment meddlin', and declared so instantly after Patrick rammed his 'fix' through the Senate.


Shortly after that, Phelan said his chamber would ignore the Senate's bill.  Little Dan's reaction was predictable.  But he also upped the ante, demanding Abbott pressure Phelan to take up his legislation (technically, it's not dead until Saturday).


Update: Things were somewhat calmer in Austin today at the Big 3's breakfast.


But not so much at Abbott's next stop in Dallas.


Governor Hell on Wheels.  No exaggeration.

I'm leaving up these hot takes from the close Lege watchers about #SB2142.


This post's most significant updates concern HPD honcho Art Acevedo heading east for Miami's top job, and several developments around that, including the surprise from Mimi Swartz at the end.


Nice way to say adios, Chief.  Schaefer Edwards at the Houston Press delivered yet another expose' of Acevedo, including the reminder that El Jefe de Policia is a self-confessed RINO.  So what I mentioned yesterday about his political future being in the Sunshine State was no joke.  And what John Whitmire let slip today seems to confirm that Acevedo has been planning his escape from H-Town for a while now.


First of all, a hard 'NO' on Whitmire.  Second: expect a bootlicking post from Charles Kuffner tomorrow morning about what wonderful news this is.  He's been thick as a brick on Acevedo for years; I have no expectation of him catching a clue now.  Kuff is a big part of the reason I don't use the word 'progressive' to describe anybody but Democrats like Joe Biden.

This updated Assemblage is too late as it is, and there's a green beer with my name on it waiting, so I'll stop here and save everything I'm still holding for tomorrow.  Not too early, though.

Until then, enjoy the flowers and the bagpipes.

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