The DMN and the Alliance's Weekly Wrangle

As muse observes, the liberal Texblogosphere is getting more and more mainstream attention, and the article in today's Dallas News focuses on our little Alliance, next summer's Netroots Nation convention in Austin (see ad at right), our little PAC, and where we're headed with all of that. Having noted our growing prominence we can segue into this week's TPA Blog Round Up, compiled as always by Vince from Capitol Annex.

Dealing with recalled toys that contain lead is putting a damper on charities' holiday toy drive efforts. Muse discovers some charities are not accepting toys or are throwing donations away.

Despite the Dallas Morning News article claiming the Texas Railroad Commission is stepping up Barnett Shale inspections, an injection well in North Texas remains seriously out of compliance. TXsharon has pictures, history and solutions at Bluedaze.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston compiles an obvious list of who won't be President in 2009: Any GOP candidate. The Republicans must have worked overtime to find this bunch of losers. White. Old. Dull.

McBlogger takes a brief look at the concerns of a Republican Bexar county commissioner who doesn't realize the Republican Party of Texas is already known as the Tolling Party of Texas.

North Texas Liberal reports on President Bush's loss of an ally in prime minister John Howard of Australia, whose Liberal Party lost handily to the Labor opposition in Saturday's elections.

The Texas Cloverleaf visited Capitol Annex for Thanksgiving with a guest blog about Turkey, Football, and JFK. Oh my!

Off the Kuff looks at mass transit versus highways for dealing with traffic congestion.

Vince at Capitol Annex reprises his holiday tradition begun last year by reprising his Laws of Thanksgiving--with a 2007 update.

In "Giving Thanks for the Corporations", PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has a few choice words from David Van Os, Jeff Cohen, and John Edwards.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson notices the conspicuous absence of Rep. Mike Krusee since a rumor surfaced that he may be retiring in Where's Krusee?

CouldBeTrue at South Texas Chisme notes Lyndon Johnson was right, but demographics are having the last laugh.

Sunday Funnies (late and long edition)

Hillary Clinton and the politics of disappointment

Paul Loeb offers a pretty accurate assessment of my own sentiments these days:

When Democrats worry about Hillary Clinton's electability, they focus on her reenergizing a depressed Republican base while demoralizing core Democratic activists, particularly those outraged about the war, and thus maybe lose the election. But there's a further danger if Hillary's nominated -- that she will win but then split the Democratic Party.

We forget that this happened with her husband Bill, because compared to Bush, he's looking awfully good. Much of Hillary's support may be nostalgia for when America's president seemed to engage reality instead of disdaining it. But remember that over the course of Clinton's presidency, the Democrats lost 6 Senate seats, 46 Congressional seats, and 9 governorships. This political bleeding began when Monica Lewinsky was still an Oregon college senior. Given Hillary's protracted support of the Iraq war, her embrace of neoconservative rhetoric on Iran, and her coziness with powerful corporate interests, she could create a similar backlash once in office, dividing and depressing the Democratic base and reversing the party's newfound momentum.

I had forgotten that happened with her husband. I do recall that he put his wife in charge of universal health care right off the bat, and the blowback was immediate and severe ...

Think about 1994. Pundits credited major Republican victories to angry white men, Hillary's failed healthcare plan, and Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America." But the defeat was equally rooted in a massive withdrawal of volunteer support among Democratic activists who felt politically betrayed. Nothing fostered this sense more than Bill Clinton's going to the mat to push the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Angered by a sense that he was subordinating all other priorities to corporate profits, and by his cavalier attitude toward the hollowing out of America's industrial base, labor, environmental and social-justice activists nationwide withdrew their energy from Democratic campaigns. This helped swing the election, much as the continued extension of these policies (particularly around dropping trade barriers with China) led just enough Democratic leaning voters in 2000 to help elect George Bush by staying home or voting for Ralph Nader.

1994 was a time before my political activism; I was working hard and long hours on my corporate career (having moved from Midland to St. Pete, FL and then to Houston in '92, 3, and 4) and while I had successfully converted from republican to Democratic in the wake of the post-Reagan era, I wasn't paying particularly close attention beyond reading the newspapers, Newsweek and such. So while Loeb accounts for his grassroots experience in Washington state as evidence of the disillusionment of enthusiasm by liberal activists, I just can't verify that was the case in Houston or Texas. I wasn't on the ground. Let's pick his point back up, though:

To prevail in close races, Democrats need enthusiastic volunteer involvement. This happened in 1992, and then again in 2006. If Hillary is the nominee, she's likely to significantly damp this involvement, especially among anti-war activists. She'll also draw out the political right in a way that will make it far harder for down-ticket Democrats in states like Kentucky and Virginia where the party has recently been winning. She might not win at all, despite Bush's disastrous reign.

Recall my many postings about Texas Democrats down-ballot from Her. Though I think Loeb is wrong about her losing.

But even if she does, she is then strongly likely to fracture the party with her stands. She talks of staying in Iraq for counterterrorism operations, which could easily become indistinguishable from the present war. She backed the recent Kyl-Lieberman vote on Iran that Senator James Webb called "Cheney's fondest pipe dream." She supported the bankruptcy bill and the extension of Bush's tax cuts on capital gains and dividends. If her contributors are any guide, like those she courted in a $1,000-a-plate dinner for homeland security contractors, she's likely to cave to corporate interests so much in her economic policies that those increasingly squeezed by America's growing divides will backlash in ways that they're long been primed to by Republican rhetoric about "liberal elitists." And if Democrats do then begin to challenge her, the relative unity created by the Bush polities will quickly erode.

Because the Republican candidates would bring us more of the same ghastly policies we've seen from Bush and Cheney, I'd vote for Hillary if she became the nominee. But I'd do so with a heavy heart, and a recognition that we'll have to push her to do the right thing on issue after issue, and won't always prevail. We still have a chance to select strong alternatives like Edwards (who I'm supporting) or Obama. And with Republican polling numbers in the toilet, this election gives Democrats an opportunity to seriously shift our national course that we may not have again for years. It would be a tragedy if they settled for the candidate most likely to shatter the momentum of this shift when it's barely begun.

That's pretty much me, right?

Sunday Funnies (early edition)

Opportunities lost and found

"Certainly, he (Arkansas tailback Darren McFadden) had a Heisman performance today," LSU coach Les Miles lamented. "Right now, there's a goal of our football team taken off the board and it's sad. ... Tonight, we'll be sick."

LSU may very well play a bowl game in New Orleans, but the one they were hoping to play -- the BCS championship game on Jan. 7 -- now looks out of reach.

That had to devastate most of the 92,606 fans who filled Tiger Stadium with earsplitting roars throughout this classic, then quietly filed out while the Razorbacks stormed the field in triumph after snapping the nation's longest home-winning streak at 19 games.

"It's really hard," Texas defensive back Brandon Foster said. "You never enjoy losing, but losing to the Aggies is just even worse."

The niece is likely celebrating, the nephew (the Aggie fish) probably just woke up with a hangover a couple of hours ago, and Mom (the LSU alum) probably is a little disappointed.

When has a team been ranked #1 twice in the same season and been knocked off twice?

Give thanks for everything

May your stuffing be tasty,
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes 'n gravy have not a lump,
May your yams be delicious,
May your pies take the prize,
May your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs. :^)

Off to spend the holiday with my wife's mother (relieving her caregivers so that they can spend the day with their families). And then to the Texas Renaissance Festival on Friday (we never go near a mall on the day after).

Limited to no access. See you on Saturday.

Giving thanks for the corporations

Thanks for nothing, that is. Some collected thoughts on the relentless creep of American fascism, starting with DVO:

Mainstream journalists are beginning to notice that $3 per gallon gasoline now looks routine and that it won't be too long before we see $4 a gallon.

Hmmm. Which candidate for Texas Attorney General said a year and a half ago that the 2006 escalation in gasoline prices was not a temporary up-tick and that the price at the pump would keep going up?

For approximately 20 years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, gasoline prices were relatively stable.

But in the late 1990s, the biggest of the giant Big Oil companies began to merge and create even more gigantic companies in a series of mind-staggering mergers. Exxon and Mobil; Shell and Texaco; etc. The continual escalation in gasoline prices of the past 9-10 years began with the beginning of the Gigantic Oil mergers and corresponds with the series of mega-mergers that took place over a few years' time.

These mergers naturally decreased competition. That was their purpose. When competition decreases, robber baron monopoly power increases, and unless there is government price regulation, prices go up. It is a rule of economic power as old as time. Instead of a free market, we end up with a monopoly market and a robber baron economy. It wasn't an accident that we ended up here. It is the very reason for the mergers.

Today, under the Clintonite-Bushite economy (sorry folks, some may find it hard to admit, but Big Bill opened the floodgates to the runaway monopoly economy), our government institutions protect monopolies from the people instead of protecting the people from monopolies.

As long as our public institutions continue to protect the monopolization that is at the root of the robber baron economy, there will be no end in sight for we the people from ever-worsening Giganto-Oil price squeezes - not to mention from the similar depredations of the Big Insurance, Big Health Care, Big Pharmaceutical, Big Toll Road, Big Banking, and other Big Robber Barons. And as long as we the people stand back and fail to take control of our public institutions, then those institutions will continue to protect the robber baron economy.

Isn't it time we get serious about taking control?

Let's see ... here's more on that Clinton angle:

The toughest brawl Bill Clinton was willing to wage (besides saving his own hide from impeachment) was against the Democratic base: for the corporate-backed NAFTA. Through the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Bill brought us far more media conglomeration than George W. He pardoned well-connected fugitive financier Marc Rich, while leaving Native American activist Leonard Peltier to rot in prison despite pleas from Amnesty International and others.

Hillary’s contribution to Clinton I was her botched healthcare proposal, a corporate-originated “reform” that would have enshrined a half-dozen of the largest insurance companies at the center of the system, and was so convoluted it never came up for a vote.

What we’ve seen of Hillary Clinton in the Senate and on the campaign trail suggests that Clinton II would indeed be a sorry sequel. Today she’s winning the endorsement of Republican CEOs, after having had (Rupert) Murdoch host a benefit for her at the Fox News building in 2006. Just as Bill Clinton’s spine achieved a rare firmness while battling for NAFTA, we recently observed in Hillary a rare passion and firmness on a single issue: her YearlyKos defense of lobbyists, including those who “represent corporations that employ a lot of people.”

And, via my other man David, my man John: "Corporate interests have literally taken over this government":



We need different kinds of leaders going forward. I'm giving thanks tomorrow for many things, and one will definitely be the wisdom of voters in 2008 to discern the difference between politics-is-business-as-usual, and to discontinue that program.

That's thanking in advance. Or paying it forward, if you prefer.