Scattershooting Electors and Obama's pardons

-- In hopefully the last epic fail of the Hillbots (at least for 2016) it looks like they succeeded in getting Electors to be faithless.  To Hillary Clinton.

More photos from the Chron here

While there was a lot of buzz about faithless Republican electors dumping Trump, it turns out that more Democratic electors dumped Clinton.  Specifically, two Republican Texas electors voted for candidates other than Trump:  one voted for John Kasich and one voted for Ron Paul.

I relish the irony of Ron Paul having earned more EC votes -- well, vote -- than Gary Johnson.  And anything that angers Greg Abbott would delight me, no matter what it was.

But four Democratic electors voted for candidates other than Hillary Clinton:

Only eight of 12 Democratic electors in Washington cast their votes for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won the state in November. In an act of symbolic protest, three electors voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and one cast a vote for Faith Spotted Eagle, a Native American elder from South Dakota.

It’s the first time in four decades that any Washington electors have broken from the state’s popular vote for president.

Emphasis theirs.  Three Washington state Democratic Electors, pledged to Her, appear to have conspired to vote for a Republican who refused to run for the office and was never seriously considered for it by the Republicans.  You can't make this stuff up.  If there's hope for abolishing the Electoral College -- and there isn't very much IMHO -- it has a little seed germinating in the aftermath of this impotent act of defiance.

Democrats that choose Tom Perez over Keith Ellison will extend the losing streak in 2018.  That's my early bet, and I'm bookmarking me for future gloating.

-- I believe Barack Obama's acts of clemency -- more than the previous eleven presidents combined, 50 times the number of his most recent predecessor, George Walker Bush -- are the very best thing he has done as president of the United States.

Just weeks before leaving office, President Obama on Monday issued 78 pardons and commuted the sentences of 153 prisoners, extending his acts of clemency to a total of 1,324 individuals, by far the largest use of the presidential power to show mercy in the nation’s history.

Of the 231 people who received a pardon or a reduced sentence from Obama, virtually all had been serving sentences under tough anti-drug laws, including those convicted of low-level, nonviolent crimes like possession of cocaine.

Those who received pardons had completed their sentences and are, in the words of Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel, now leading “a productive and law-abiding post-conviction life, including by contributing to the community in a meaningful way.” The pardons wipe away any legal liabilities from a conviction.

I stepped away from this president in 2009, when he did not show any commitment to getting the legislation passed that has long borne his name.  I was incensed by his replacing the torture of the Bush administration with unadjudicated assassination of suspected terrorists by drone, a legacy of fomenting the very thing he pledged to eradicate.  This legacy will live on long after him.  Not just after he leaves office, but after he is dead and gone.

However ...

The president has said he has been motivated to exercise his clemency power by a belief that the sentencing system in the United States was used to lock up minor criminals — often minorities — for excessively long periods of time.

At the end of 2015, as he commuted the sentences of 95 federal prisoners, Obama said it was “another step forward in upholding our ideals of justice and fairness” and added that “if we can show at the federal level that we can be smart on crime, more cost effective, more just, more proportionate, then we can set a trend for other states to follow as well. And that’s our hope.”

Tens of thousands of inmates, mostly young African-American or Hispanic men, were locked up in the effort to combat drug violence during the past three decades. Many of those men were sentenced under federal guidelines that required them to serve decades or longer in prison.

During the past several years, a bipartisan coalition emerged to overhaul that system. The unlikely allies included conservatives like Charles G. and David H. Koch, the billionaire brothers, and the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy organization with close connections to Hillary Clinton.

But hopes for a legislative deal to overhaul the nation’s sentencing system failed to materialize during the bitter 2016 presidential campaign. That left Obama with one option: to use his clemency power case by case.

Emphasis above is mine.  I applaud this action and I hope the president will pardon more individuals before he leaves office.

The Week-Before-Xmas Wrangle

With the last weekly blog post roundup before Christmas, the Texas Progressive Alliance would like to enlist in the annual 'War' on Christmas, but can't find a recruiting station.

Off the Kuff analyzed Fort Bend election results with an eye on 2018.

Socratic Gadfly looked at the ongoing post-election Wikileaks fallout, and addressed issues about what constitutes both journalism and democratic process, along with side issues about elitism.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is tired of Texas Republicans harassing and humiliating women and the poor. Fake abortion requirements and drug testing of benefit recipients serve no other purpose than to make Texas white nationalists feel superior.

Neil at All People Have Value said it is a mistake to follow the bright lights while ignoring the abyss beyond. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

jobsanger points out the irony that a relative of LBJ, US Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas, has already introduced legislation to make Social Security less secure for retirees.

With Rick Perry and Rex Tillerson tapped to join Trump's cabinet, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs found the two Texans too oily for his taste.

The Lewisville Texan Journal writes about falling into, and rising out of, homelessness in that city.

The Houston Press takes note of one of the first items on new Harris County DA Kim Ogg's agenda: fire a whole bunch of staff.

And Politifact Texas names Fake News as the Lie of the Year.

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And here's more from other Texas blogs and news outlets!

The Texas Election Law Blog shares some thoughts on today's Electoral College vote.

Chris Hooks at the Texas Observer went to see the five candidates running for DNC chair, who all spoke in Austin this past Saturday.

The FWST presents episode 18 of 'Titletown, TX', also known as Aledo, as their high school football team pursues its sixth state championship in eight seasons.

BOR looks at the coming legislative attack on Texas unions.

Adam Tutor suggests giving the gift of non-profit support this holiday season.

Better Texas Blog highlights income inequality in Texas.

The TSTA Blog calls Greg Abbott "clueless" on special education needs.

Murray Newman eulogizes longtime Harris County courthouse figure Rick Johnson.

And the Salon of Somervell County has some big plans for 2017.

Sunday Unpresidented Funnies

Just Putin this here

Too Oily

Finally there's some news about Texas that is bloggable.  As usual, it's something Republican and excessively awful.

The tapping of Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, and Secretary of Energy-designate Rick Perry (a Dancing With the Stars contestant) truly suggests -- as many others have long ago noticed -- that Trump is just trolling us all now.

Rick Perry for the Department of Energy? Perry will be running an organization he doesn’t even think should exist. By that logic, I should be the CEO of Citigroup. Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, for Secretary of State? Negotiating a peace treaty requires a different skill set than getting a permit to drill in the Black Sea.

The New York Times published a thoughtful op-ed by physicist Lawrence M. Krauss noting that the current energy secretary is also a physicist (a Nobel Prize-winning one) and outlining a number of critical issues facing the department. It was headlined, “Rick Perry is the Wrong Choice for Energy Secretary.”

The wrong choice? It’s hard to view these nominations as anything but the deliberate mockery of their departments, and of government itself.

Trump is filling a vacancy previously occupied by two nuclear scientists with Rick Perry, a guy who failed chemistry at Texas A&M.  He did earn a D in a course named Meats, however.  It is worth noting that the DOE has more to do these days with regulating nuclear energy than it does fossil fuels.  Which leaves very little room for mistakes of the cerebral variety.

As with the EPA-head-to-be, these people are no friends of the Earth.

Perry comes across as a likable goofball, but make no mistake: He’ll do a lot of harm in his new role. He’s very close to the oil and gas industry, and he denies the reality of climate change. In addition to steering energy policy, he’ll also be in charge of our nuclear stockpile and responsible for major counter-terrorism efforts.

Worried yet?

After living through and blogging about Perry's terms as governor -- his cronyism, his corruption, his re-election in 2006 with 39% of the vote, the persistent rumors of him being firmly in the closet, his indictments, his skating past his indictments, his Lordapolooza at Reliant/NRG stadium, his inability to find the vagina on an anatomical doll (the 2nd-most clicked post in this blog's fourteen-year history), his outrage at cartoon explosions as opposed to actual ones (in West, TX; the 5th-highest clicked post here) his cuddling a small bottle of maple syrup -- what is there left for me to say about him?

This: assuming there's a United States left after Trump starts WWIII with China, Rick Perry is going to hear God telling him to run for president again some day, and he might just be smart enough to have learned from his mistakes.  For the sake of a God I will never believe in, I hope I'm dead before I see Rick Perry elected president of the US.  Surely there's at least one more shitty neoliberal Democrat that can get in between him and Trump, yes?  No?

As for Tillerson, he's unlikely to survive the confirmation process, with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, and Tony Perkins all lined up against him.

(Tillerson) made his career by trading with Russia and was now-famously awarded the Kremlin’s “Order of Friendship.”

Even some Republicans are worried about him. “Based upon his extensive business dealings with the Putin government and his opposition of efforts to impose sanctions on the Russian government,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, “there are many questions which must be answered.”

These Republicans don’t mention ExxonMobil’s suppression of scientific data that showed carbon fuels contributed to harmful climate change. For decades it denied that its own products were harming the planet. ExxonMobil spent more than $30 million on think tanks that denied the reality of climate change, despite its own groundbreaking but secret research from the 1970s onward that proved the opposite.

To be fair, Tillerson originally supported Jeb Bush for president, which means the fossil-fuel tycoon isn’t always opposed to “low-energy” alternatives.

Mwahahaha.  If your primary objection to the man is that he turned the Boy Scouts gay, you might just be the most unhinged Christian extremist in the country.

“Trump calls Rex a 'world class player and deal-maker,' but if these are the kinds of deals Tillerson makes — sending dollars to an abortion business that's just been referred for criminal prosecution and risking the well-being of young boys under his charge in an attempt to placate radical homosexual activists — then who knows what sort of 'diplomacy' he would champion at DOS?” Perkins wrote on the Family Research Council’s website, where he serves as president.

Update: Some "hey, it could be worse" than Tillerson from Vox.  There have been many poor choices made by this president-elect to date; it's hard to pick a 'worst'.  But these two Texans are absolutely in the top five.

Trump’s appointees constitute an ‘anti-government,’ to use Eugene Robinson’s resonant phrase. But let’s be clear about what that really means: Trump’s appointees will lead institutions whose functions they fundamentally oppose.

Tillerson has displayed no interest in diplomacy. Rick Perry is the ultimate ‘anti-government’ appointee. His desire to extinguish his new department is matched only by his ability to forget that it even exists. Neither seems to value government’s role in balancing public and private interests.

Trump isn’t just making “wrong choices” for these jobs. He’s displaying his contempt for the positions themselves. He’s showing himself and his friends just how much he can get away with.

Those of us who can see Trump for who he is should stop acting as if he’s unique. His pitch is as stale as an old carny’s. His con is as dated as three-card monte.

Trump voters don’t seem to have figured out yet that they’re being trolled and scammed. They will. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time - not when the world falls into chaos and the air turns dark with poison.

Too dramatic?  You'd better hope so.