Monday, February 07, 2022

Thawing-out Wrangle from Far Left Texas


These pens are full.


Yes, there were outages, but it was mostly of the icy wire and wind variety.  Austin got the cobblestone frozen streets and is boiling water until tomorrow night; there were some mad truckers on I-10 in the Hill Country, but none of those things are going to tip Governor Helen Wheels' chair.  Thus Beto's message shifted to ... PTSD.


There's a fresh talking point, but O'Rourke probably doesn't want to go there.


Tough break for Beto.  He was met with derision at his rally last night in Denton County, and his supporters clashed with some counter-protestors.


I suppose that will be my segue to the Tex-Cons behaving badly.


Once again however, Texas Democrats couldn't leave the embarrassment to Team Red.


And for the record let's note that the corruption is often bipartisan.


I take it that those bloggers who focus exclusively on Houston and Harris County won't be mentioning this story, so let me remind them -- and you, dear reader -- that El Franco Lee, RIP, died in office a few years ago with a million bucks in the bank, and the biggest complaint I read was how little he did to help Democrats down the ballot in all his years on commissioners' court.

Yeah.  The corruption is also non-partisan, unless someone knows what this guy's politics are.


One last political item.


None of these three people, as it turns out (scroll down), meets the definition of 'progressive'.  But if the Congresswoman who leads the Squad is successful in adding a couple of new members, do you think they will finally be able to accomplish something?  Beyond tweeting platitudes, I mean.

A couple of COVID updates, since I haven't posted anything in awhile.


And the environmental updates.  First: there was a consequence of the freeze in Texas City.


We already knew that the TCEQ -- under sunset review -- isn't monitoring emissions before and after winter storms, hurricanes, and the like.  This bureaucracy doesn't need reform; it needs to be abolished, reimagined, and reconstituted with actual environmentalists, not government toadies.


And the social justice news: to mark Black History Month, Retro Snacking is tweeting some newspaper articles from the past regarding Texas lynchings.


Last, the calm-me-downs.

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Sunday, February 06, 2022

Sunday "Legitimate Political Discourse" Funnies


Support a disappearing craft with a subscription to a political cartoonist.

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Wednesday, February 02, 2022

Groundhog Day Wrangle


The next few days will reveal whether Abbott and company will coast to re-election in March -- and November -- or whether the weather can turn the tide from red to blue.  If the Lone Star version of Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, it's four more years of winter in Deep In The Hearta.


Hope is not a strategy, but when you're as far behind in the polling and the fundraising as Beto is today ... what else is there?

We'll come back to Texas Democrats' failing downpost; let's catch up with the TXGOP, still doing what they do.


With the price of oil soaring, these guys will have millions more to throw away on hyper-extremist conservative politics this year.


Ted's presidential ambitions are going to be thwarted again by Trump.  What a tragedy.


Moving on to more of the foibles of Governor Fish Lips that don't include the grid.


And wrapping this segment with the egregious laws passed in the 87th Texas Lege that are coming home to roost.


The damage wasn't limited to Republicans, however.  Some of your favorites on Team Blue really disgraced themselves, and it's only Wednesday.


ICYMI.  Truly smells like desperation from Rodriguez.  It was revealed by Tribune of the People that his primary opponent Greg Casar made his own lurch to the right, and reported at nearly the same time that Amnesty International called out the government of Israel.  Lining up with an apartheid state is a bad move no matter when it occurs, but right before voting is to begin for a brand new, solid D seat just reeks of pandering for the Jewish vote.  This move also came in the wake of the federal court ruling that Texas' anti-BDS law violates the First Amendment (injunction .pdf).

A very coincidental series of events.


Not as difficult to understand given Garcia's other progressive failings, but another echo -- on the heels of the no-vote taken in the California Assembly yesterday -- of Democrats' inability to choose the will of the people over the will of their donors.  It's an extension of Gene Green's legacy she's settling into.


I suppose that will be my segue to the legal, criminal, and social justice updates.


A couple of labor updates, segue-ing into the soothers to end today.

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Monday, January 31, 2022

"It's not Monday you hate, it's capitalism" Wrangle


How was your weekend?


There were two polls regarding the Texas primary elections released over the weekend.  The first, on Friday from the Hobby School of Political Affairs at the University of Houston, has most GOP statewide incumbents -- Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, Sid Miller, Glenn Hegar -- holding comfortable leads for renomination.  Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian, not so much.  The Republican primary for commissioner of the General Land Office, vacated by George P. Bush in his bid against Paxton, is a tossup (80% of those queried are unsure for whom they might vote).

In the Democratic primary, Beto O'Rourke leads handily.  In the lieutenant governor's race, Mike Collier is ahead with 24% but 58% are undecided.  Rochelle Garza (14%), Joe Jaworski (12%), Lee Merritt (7%), and two others with 7% portend a runoff in the scrum for attorney general to face off with Paxton (60% of Dems are unsure).  Same in the contest for GLO, with Sandragrace Martinez leading Michael Lange, Jay Kleburg, and Jinny Suh with 64% undecided.

While these numbers don't seem out of place, it's possible that the pollsters could be weighting Latin@ voters a bit too much and under-sampling Black Dems for my interpretation.  But there was also a general election matchup polled, and IMO these results are the closest to accurate for predicting the ultimate fall outcome.


Six percent uncertain is a rather stunning number nine months away.

The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler's poll, out yesterday, looks somewhat the same... and somewhat different.


Robert Showah has more on Texans' opinions from that survey, including this:


I did not want to open today's Wrangle with an overflowing vat of stupid and crazy, but I can't leave the topic of conservatives behaving badly without a few more items.


They simply outdid themselves this past week.

I have a few criminal, legal, and social justice headlines; the first deals with the previous Tweet regarding Tim Dunn above.


On January 22, members of the Karankawa Nation and several hundred supporters gathered in front of a Bank of America location in Austin (to speak out) against the planned expansion of an oil pier owned and operated by Canada-based oil giant Enbridge. The expansion would cross sacred land at a Karankawa village site near Corpus Christi Bay in south Texas. Pipeline construction would also endanger burial artifacts and have a disastrous effect on the sensitive and biodiverse wet marshes.

Chiara, a Karankawa organizer, gave an impassioned speech defending the environment of her people’s homeland and called out Bank of America for financing fossil fuel extraction. Bank of America invested $42 billion in fossil fuels in 2020 alone.

That will be my segue to the environmental news.




“I’ve seen a lot of Big Oil ads, but this has to be one of the creepiest,” Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, said in an email. “Valero wants us to feel like it isn’t just our cars, but the very lives of our children that depend on their product. There’s an unsaid threat in these commercials: transition to clean energy and the world as you know it will cease to exist. That’s of course false ..."

"East Texas, North Texas residents push back against solar plant construction" via KLTV

*heavy sigh*

Dozens of people living in Crawford, just half an hour west of Waco, raised concerns at a school district meeting about the company, OCI Solar Power, building facilities just outside the city. The company is based out of San Antonio, and it proposed a $115 million solar farm. A company official managing the project said the project will not cost the community any tax dollars if approved -- now it’s up to the school board to designate land as commercial property.

A farmer in Crawford said he’d been offered more money than he could make farming to sell his land to make way for construction, but said his neighbors, “would not be happy living next to a plant.”

A similar situation is happening in Southmayd, near Texas’ border with Oklahoma. The school district board there voted to agree to a deal with Galactic Energy. The solar development company is proposing the construction of a 1,750 acre solar farm. Some residents there said they don’t want to lose the landscape and property they’ve lived on for generations. People raising their concerns are asking the school board to reconsider, and say they’re considering starting a petition against construction.


Going extra long on the calm-me-downs to wrap today.

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Sunday, January 30, 2022

Sunday "Busy Week" Funnies

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