Peace for Paris Wrangle

As it brings you this week's aggregate of lefty blog posts, the Texas Progressive Alliance stands with Parisians and citizens of the world in condemning the violent attacks of last week.

Off the Kuff took a closer look at how people voted in the Houston mayor's race.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos, and contributing to Daily Kos, wonders if Houston's anti-HERO supporters (those who embrace discrimination on behalf of bathrooms) know the group's head ringleader is defending a male bathroom pervert?

Socratic Gadfly is trying to popularize the term Inside the Mopac media as a parallel to "Inside the Beltway media." (And he's just started reading "A Field Philosopher's Guide to Fracking," which has a number of references to our own TXSharon at BlueDaze!)

Donald Trump asked "How stupid are the people of Iowa?" and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs answered, "stupid enough to vote for you, asshole".

Neil at All People Have Value observed that artist Mark Rothko had an almost Starbucks level of hatred for Jesus. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme thinks it's all kinds of wrong to have private businesses pay for our border patrol.

From main line media reporting, it almost seems like some "shocking development" that the same forces which defeated the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance would now turn their ire upon the city of Dallas. But to Texas Leftist, or anyone that has closely followed the U.S. Pastors Council, this move was just a matter of time. Hold on to your seats North Texas, and get ready for some heinous lies to come your way.

Egberto Willies sees similarities between the message Robert Jeffress preaches and that of the most extreme mullahs of ISIS.

The Lewisville Texan Journal passes on the LISD pleading that Greg Abbott appoint an experienced state commissioner of education.

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And here's more posts from other Texas blogs.

jobsanger takes note of the fact that Republicans are embarrassingly bad at creating jobs.

The Texas Election Law Blog updates the story about the ongoing challenges that the city of Martindale has had in conducting a local election.

Culturemap Houston goes to acclaimed local filmmaker Trey Edwards Shults for advice on surviving Thanksgiving with family: Make a movie together.

Somervell County Salon posts about Land Commissioner George P. Bush's Alamo overreach.

Prairie Weather has a eulogy of French philosopher Andre Glucksmann.

The Texas Observer was on the scene as the UT Million Student March called for free tuition, cancellation of student debt, and a $15 minimum wage for campus employees.

Grits for Breakfast has the report on the Texas DPS documenting traffic stops of minority drivers as 'white'.

Morgan Guyton decries Houston pastors who bore false witness against their transgender brothers and sisters.

Texas Watch has a petition calling for hospitals to be accountable for their doctors.

Raise Your Hand Texas reviews the education-related interim charges for the Legislature.

Alexa Martin-Storey and Kate Prickett remind us that plenty of laws and policies that undermine same-sex parenting still exist.

And last, Fascist Dyke Motors found some blog seeds while cleaning.

Sunday Funnies

"I am not afraid"

If you don't know what Grindr is, Mom... don't Google it.

"L'Horreur"

French President Francois Hollande vowed a “merciless” response to the deadliest attacks on the country’s soil since World War II as ISIS claimed responsibility Saturday for a coordinated assault on Paris.

A state of emergency was declared and France deployed 1,500 troops after a near-simultaneous series of explosions and shootings brought the city to a horrified standstill overnight. The death (toll was at least 120)...

French police were hunting possible accomplices of eight assailants, who attacked concert-goers, cafe diners and soccer fans in a coordinated assault targeting at least six locations in the French capital. Authorities said that seven attackers blew themselves up, while the eighth was shot by police.

Just Parisians and tourists enjoying a night out.

Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for attacks that killed 127 people in Paris, saying it sent militants strapped with suicide bombing belts and carrying machine guns to various locations in the heart of the capital.

The attacks, described by France's president as an act of war, were designed to show the country would remain in danger as long as it continued its current policies, Islamic State said in a statement.

The French have been at the tip of this spear before, when the offices of cartoon satirists Charlie Hebdo were attacked in similar fashion.  Could this be swift retaliation from the drone assassination of "Jihadi John", aka Mohammed Emwazi, just a day or two ago?

There have been remarkably inappropriate responses from American politicians already.  First, Ted Cruz, who believes that the appropriate response is to kill civilians in the vicinity of IS.

We must immediately recognize that our enemy is not ‘violent extremism.’ It is the radical Islamism that has declared jihad against the west. It will not be appeased by outreach or declarations of tolerance. It will not be deterred by targeted airstrikes with zero tolerance for civilian casualties, when the terrorists have such utter disregard for innocent life.

Cruz did not specify where these airstrikes should take place or what they should be targeting.

Cruz also called for “a halt to any plans to bring refugees that may have been infiltrated by ISIS” to the United States. Previously, Cruz has misquoted U.S. intelligence officials to make the case against taking in Syrian refugees.

There is no evidence yet that any refugees were involved in the attacks. 

Then there's Republican Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina.  There won't be no ferriners in his district, he's tellin' ya raght now.

If you have looked at your Twitter feed this morning, you'll see the following trending topics: #ParisAttacks, Islamic State, and ISIS, along with Stop The War, #MuslimsAreNotTerrorist, and #MakePeaceIn5Words.  Earlier, #WW3 was also trending.

I don't know what the appropriate response is so soon after this horror, but I don't think Ted Cruz or Jeff Duncan or any other Republican are ever going to have the proper one.  It seems that IS at the very least has managed to export its very radical definition of terrorism well outside the borders of Syria and Iraq, and the West's response is -- sort of like Israel's to the Palestinians -- hit 'em back harder.  We've had a few hundred years, it seems, to learn that this is probably not the best path forward.

The Democratic debate tonight will have some fresh questions.

“American leadership is put to the test,” (CBS' Steve) Capus said. “The entire world is looking to the White House. These people are vying to take over this office.”

 

“This is exactly what the president is going to have to face,” he added.

Mr. Capus said the news team had planned a different debate, but “there is no question that the emphasis changes dramatically.”

“It is the right time to ask all the related questions that come to mind,” he added. “We think we have a game plan to address a lot of the substantive and important topics.”

It will be revealing to me to see where Mr. Capus drives the bus tonight.  My prediction is that we're going to watch as Clinton, Sanders, and O'Malley put on their most hawkish facade and talk tough, to avoid being called doves by the thuggish GOP (which will happen, even if Hillary Clinton threatens to turn the western Syrian desert into glass, trust me). 

There's a larger national conversation that it feels like we ought to be having.

Do we bomb or do we talk?  If we talk, do we talk about what influenced and radicalized, from the beginning, the people who carried out the bombings and beheadings and killings?  Or are they just too crazy to talk to and we keep on droning them until they're all dead.  (Except they won't be; there's always a fresh generation provoked by the martyring who wants to 'get some payback', too.)

Update: If you want to better understand this dilemma straight from the horses' mouths -- i.e., every living CIA director -- then start there with the second page of the report on drone assassinations, and then back up and read how Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et. al. got it wrong in 2001.  (The documentary will air at the end of this month on Showtime.  Here's the trailer.)

And when does America get hit?  Sooner, or later?  Does the guy/gal sitting in the Oval Office catch the blame if it happens on their watch?  Do we invade some country that had nothing to do with the attack because they're close by?  How about more troops on the ground, which means more flag-draped caskets, more solemn, longer Veterans Day parades, and eventually -- a couple of decades from now -- a granite monument to the fallen in DC, and other towns across the country?  How about some more torture and wiretapping of American citizens?  More VA atrocities, more homeless vets, more suicides of vets?

I've seen this movie before.  Can we rewrite the script?

Texas abortion law heads to SCOTUS

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to a Texas law that would leave the state with about 10 abortion clinics, down from more than 40. The court has not heard a major abortion case since 2007, and the new case has the potential to affect millions of women and to revise the constitutional principles governing abortion rights.

[...]

The case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, No. 15-274, could provide the Supreme Court with an opportunity to clarify its 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which said states may not place undue burdens on the constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability. The court said undue burdens included “unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.”

Texas legislators said that the contested provisions were needed to protect women’s health. Abortion providers responded that the regulations were expensive, unnecessary and a ruse intended to put many of them out of business.

The history:

Casey was a huge victory for abortion-rights advocates because it ended up reaffirming the constitutional right to an abortion that the court established in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

In 2007, a divided court upheld a federal law that bans an abortion procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion and opened the door to new limits on abortion.

There should be a decision handed down next spring or summer... just in time to become an issue in the presidential election.

If the Roberts Court rules against abortion providers and their patients, it could leave Texas with only ten clinics, forcing more than 75 percent of the clinics in the state to close. Mississippi will lose its only clinic, and anti-abortion lawmakers in states that have not yet passed similar requirements will no doubt be emboldened to push for them.

Abortion access nationwide quite literally hangs in the balance.

Update: The early line.

The outcome in this case is likely to come down to the vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Though Kennedy typically votes with opponents of abortion, he voted to grant a temporary stay preventing Texas’s anti-abortion law from going into effect. So this case might be one of the rare cases where Kennedy determines that an abortion restriction goes too far.

More from Reuters (and many others popping into your timeline and feeds).

"How stupid are the people of Iowa?"

I'll only go so far as to say that they really don't have any business hitting leadoff in our presidential election process and leave it at that (the last two Iowa GOP caucus winners, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, debated at the little table last Tuesday).  Trump, what do you think?

"How stupid are the people of Iowa?" declared Trump during a rally at Iowa Central Community College. "How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?" For more than an hour and a half Thursday night, the billionaire real estate mogul harshly criticized not only Carson, but many of his other competitors in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

In his free-wheeling appearance, Trump also said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is rising in the polls, was "weak like a baby, like a baby" and "not a good poker player because every time he's under pressure he starts to just profusely sweat." And he said former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush didn't deserve his attention because his campaign is doing so poorly.

This is a full-blown rant.  A wall-eyed, snot-nosed hissy fit, as Juanita Jean likes to say.  Spit flying, white specks at the corner of his mouth, blood pressure humping and pumping.  Strokelandia.

 Let's make him do it again.

Trump accused Democratic front-runner Hilary Rodham Clinton, who is campaigning to be the first female president, of "playing the woman's card, big league."

But his strongest words, by far, were aimed at Carson, whose powerful life story and soft-spoken demeanor have captured the attention of many voters. Trump, once the undisputed poll leader, is now running neck-and-neck with Carson in many opinion surveys.

Trump previewed his attack line in an interview with CNN Thursday in which the businessman pointed to Carson's own descriptions of his "pathological temper" as a young man.

"That's a big problem because you don't cure that," Trump said. "That's like, you know, I could say, they say you don't cure — as an example, child molester. You don't cure these people. You don't cure the child molester." Trump also said that "pathological is a very serious disease."

Ladies and gentlemen, your front-runners for the Republican nomination to be President of the United States.  To be fair and balanced, Trump is just using Carson's own words against him.

In his book "Gifted Hands," Carson described the uncontrollable anger he felt at times while growing up in inner-city Detroit. He wrote that on one occasion he nearly punched his mother and on another he attempted to stab a friend with a knife.

"I had what I only can label a pathological temper — a disease — and this sickness controlled me, making me totally irrational," Carson said, in describing the incident with his mother. He referred to "pathological anger" again in telling about lunging at his friend, a knife blade breaking off when it hit the boy's belt buckle.

Carson's ability to overcome his anger as well as an impoverished childhood to become a world-renowned neurosurgeon has been a central chapter in his personal story. A spokesman for Carson declined to comment on Trump's remarks.

We have simply got to goad Carson into commenting, liberal media. 

During the rally Thursday night in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Trump said that Carson is "an enigma to me."

He went on to repeat the molestation analogy with his comments about pathological temper, and he questioned aspects of Carson's biography. At one point, Trump acted out the scene of Carson trying to stab his friend, lurching forward dramatically. "He lunged that knife into the stomach of his friend, but, lo and behold, it hit the belt!" Trump declared.

"Give me a break."

In "Gifted Hands," Carson describes racing to the bathroom in his house after the near-stabbing incident — and in time beginning to pray for God's help in dealing with his temper.

"During those hours alone in the bathroom, something happened to me," he wrote. "God heard my deep cries of anguish. A feeling of lightness flowed over me, and I knew a change of heart had taken place. I felt different. I was different."

In questioning Carson's religious awakening, Trump said in Fort Dodge that Carson went into the bathroom and came out, "and now he's religious."

"And the people of Iowa believe him. Give me a break. Give me a break. It doesn't happen that way," Trump said. "Don't be fools."

Despite what I have said repeatedly about polls, I'm anxious to see what they reveal about a week or two from now.  This feels like a turning point for a couple of candidates.   The conservative Borg has been completely unpredictable to this point, but a settling-out of the real lunacy of Trump and Carson to the regular loons of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio is somewhat overdue.

Watching, and waiting.

Update:

Will Donald Trump’s epic meltdown in Iowa — which has been widely ridiculed by the political classes today — have any impact on his long-term chances?

There is a great deal of chatter about how Trump may have fatally damaged himself by calling the voters of Iowa “stupid” for believing Ben Carson’s redemption tales. But as David Kurtz and Brian Beutler point out, this is just more of the same from Trump, who has built his entire candidacy on calling out mass stupidity and vowing to roll over it to get things done. Voters may just acquiesce to this as another part of the show, the way audiences submit to, and even laugh along with, a stand-up comic who is brutally ridiculing them.

But this meltdown represents something much greater than merely a cringeworthy spectacle. In a way Trump’s rambling monologue amounts to an indictment of the fundamental stupidity and arbitrariness of American politics in general. And as such, we may look back at this moment and see it in a different light, as crossing from sheer buffoonery into a semi-poignant glimpse into the foibles of human vanity. That’s because the stupidity and arbitrariness that Trump rages at here are the reasons why Trump himself has held the lead for so long, perhaps persuading him that he has an actual shot at being president. And so, whether he knows this or not, Trump is railing at the same forces that elevated him — and, he seems to sense, may be deserting him. They may not end up deserting him — perhaps Trump will be the nominee, though I highly doubt it — but he seems to sense that they just might.