The Weekly Wrangle

April showers and May flowers and all that (though the best of the bluebonnet season is already here; get out for a drive this weekend). The time is also ripe for this week's roundup of blog highlights from the Texas Progressive Alliance.

Something bubbles up from the ground in Bartonville. Could this be why so many dogs nearby have cancer? Since drilling toxins were found in Barnett Shale residents' blood and urine, maybe it's time to test the animals too. TXsharon struggles to keep pace with the latest Barnett Shale news at Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

The Texas Cloverleaf highlights the case of the Christmas goose in Flower Mound.

Off the Kuff writes about the pitch from the gambling industry.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders about the wisdom of building a silly, damaging border fence while allowing foreign companies to control our ports.

It was a wild week for the economy and, surprisingly, for economic history. McBlogger takes a look at one historical revisionist who likes misrepresentation almost as much as Ayn Rand. Then he goes on to explain just what Goldman Sachs did.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote a comprehensive preview post of the upcoming election in the United Kingdom. Election Day is May 6. The post is being updated daily with new developments and it took some time to write. So please give it a look if you find the topic to be interest.

Bay Area Houston finds another one of Bob Perry's bitches.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson shows that the 2006 Texas tax swap created a $5 billion annual budget hole and the bill is coming due next year: Texas Republicans created a budget shortfall to cut programs that help working Texans.

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw catches up with Johnny Cronyn . He and Mitch McConnell "continue[s] to serve the banksters of Wall Street their breakfast in bed." More to the point, Libby explains the battle lines being drawn between Obama and the Dems and those lap dogs of the privileged, the Republican Pary. Check it out: John Cornyn, Mitch McConnell, the GOP Stand by Their Wall Street Man .

The TeaBaggers and the regular GOP nuts fought each other to a stand-off on Election Runoff Day. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has the sordid details.

In Flower Mound, gas drillers have crossed the line into express advocacy in local elections, sending out a letter to mineral owners telling them who to vote for in a town council election. WhosPlayin has the deets.

Nine thousand dollars a month

That's what Texas taxpayers have been fronting for Rick Perry's living accommodations while the Governor's mansion is being renovated (since October 2007).



Rick Perry, the longest serving governor in the history of Texas, has been on the public payroll since 1984. That was when he was first elected a state representative -- before he was agriculture commissioner (1990), long before he was lt. governor (1998).

Rick Perry has essentially never held an honest job, never drawn a paycheck that wasn't paid for with your taxes. Yet he runs for office as an outsider (despite what he claims). He was a Democrat until 1989, and became a TeaBagger earlier this year when that came into vogue.

Texans have been born, raised, gone to college and had children of their own not knowing any other governor besides a moment when Rick Perry was not drawing a paycheck from their tax dollars.

How long is too long to be governor of Texas? How much of Rick Perry is too much?

I've had enough. How about you?

Sunday Evening Funnies

Perry 2010: Shooting blanks

Governor MoFo ducked the Teabaggers yesterday and went to NASCAR instead. The photo below classically demonstrates both his fetish with firearms and his underlying impotence, not to mention his constant overcompensating for it in inappropriate ways (taking conservative bloggers to a shooting range, relishing and savoring the state's execution of an innocent man, forcing poor children into greater poverty and worse health, and on and on and on).

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's caption: Texas Gov. Rick Perry has some fun with a six-shooter filled with blanks at an event in downtown Fort Worth to kickoff a weekend of NASCAR racing at the Texas Motor Speedway, Thursday, April 15, 2010

TeaBaggers, plain ol' GOP nuts battle to a draw

Voters routed state Reps. Delwin Jones and Norma Chavez on Tuesday, turned back former state Rep. Rick Green's bid for a spot on the Texas Supreme Court and handed victories to at least three candidates who appeared to benefit from the Tea Party insurgency in Texas. ... Republican voters in Lubbock and four other counties ousted long-time state Rep. Jones in favor of Charles Perry, a Tea Party organizer who campaigned for change and apparently got voters worked up about his candidacy: The runoff drew 17,501 voters — more than most primaries in March turned out.

Here's an Ode to Delwin Jones. Involuntarily retired from public service again at 86, he first served in the Texas House in 1965 (as a Democrat then), was swept out in the '70's when the Panhandle led the charge of the Reagan Democrats to the GOP, and returned in 1989 as a born-again Republican. So long and thanks for all the fish.

In fact the wins for TeaBaggers mostly came in in WTX, and certainly from the rural parts of the state. (Quico Canseco -- who hosted a phone bank for Scott Brown back in January -- won the right to lose to Ciro Rodriguez in CD-25 in the fall.) The best news of the day came in the loss of true lunatic Rick Green in his bid to join the other slightly-less-extreme-wingnuts on the Texas Supreme Court, and another social conservative dispatched from the SBOE. Those are defeats for the Texas Tea-liban faction. Some are still celebrating, of course.

In Harris County, results appear similarly muddled from the starboard perspective:

Depending upon your point of view, Harris County is either the leader of the social conservative movement in Texas or is the millstone around the neck of the Republican Party of Texas, slowly choking off the oxygen and turning the state purple. In the largest runoff turnout in a decade, Harris County voters took a page from Nancy Reagan's playbook and just said no to broadening the base of the party.

That won't slow Dan Patrick down from performing purity tests however, because Republicans are much more scared of the Tea Party phenomenon than Democrats are. Ick-Rot. Gotsta love it. Thanks, Big Jolly.

Here is a fair warning for Texas Democrats: get your shit together. It's going to be uphill and against the wind as it is, and with continuing nonsense from the Right appealing to the lowest common intelligence denominator, you need to get. on. your. game.