Obama bomaye

1. McCain actually makes a rather handsome African-American man, even if he does have teeth protruding from his neck.

2. Then again, so do other reptilians.

Some questions for Boyd Richie

Could someone read these to him and send me his answers?

-- Why is it your only goal to help elect a half-dozen or so Texas House members in 2008, the same as 2006? I think I see you working here: you want a bare majority in the House by 2010 in order to control redistricting in January of 2011, but what makes you think -- even if we get there -- the fifteen Craddickrats will flip on Speaker Tom? Loyalty?

(Have you not been paying attention to Aaron Pena?)

More importantly, why is this your only goal? It's a laudable goal, but since we haven't elected a statewide Democrat in over a dozen years, couldn't you try a little harder this year for Rick Noriega than you did for Chris Bell and all the others in 2006?

-- When the Obama campaign offered to fly you (and other undeclared state party chairs) to Chicago a couple of weeks ago to discuss allocating financial resources for the fall campaign, why did you blow them off? You not only didn't go but refused to send anyone in your place. Don't you realize you sent the message that Texas is not in play this November?

Why did you do that?

Don't you think Noriega, and the Democrats we're trying to get elected in Harris County and all across the rest of the state, could have used that help?

-- Why did someone named Rudy Shank, representing himself as being with the Obama campaign in Chicago but acting on behalf of Texans for Obama head Ron Kirk, call one of your rivals for state party chair and tell her to withdraw her candidacy, or else she would lose her superdelegate status to the Denver convention?

Isn't the Obama campaign telling Texans that the campaign is neutral in the state party chair contest?

And why is the guy you picked to be the convention chair, Senator Kirk Watson, endorsing you for state party chair? Really, isn't that just a little bit sleazy?

Isn't this the sort of low-grade corruption we criticize the Republicans about?

-- When are you going to declare your presidential preference? Will it be on June 3rd, when the last primary voting has completed and the fate of the nomination lies solely with you and the other undeclared superdelegates? Or will you keep straddling the fence until after you have safely been re-elected chairman of the party?

Or will you declare moments after the matter has been settled by others?

Are you telling the Obama people you're with them? or the Clinton folks that you're with her?

Come now: who do you choose, Clinton or Obama? How hard can it be at this point to pick one?

Ah, thanks for clearing this one up.

Bloggers' Caucus set for June 5

Every two years at the Texas Democratic Party's state convention the Texas Progressive Alliance hosts the best party of the biennium. This time around we'll be at the Cedar Door. Here's your invitation:

The Texas Progressive Alliance
Proudly Presents
The Third Biennial Blogger’s Caucus
Thursday, June 5, 2008
8:30 p.m. - Midnight
The Cedar Door
2nd and Brazos
Austin, Texas

Come and have a drink with the best and brightest from the Texas Blogosphere.

Me, too.

Update: And you can meet really important people, such as SD-11 Texas Senate candidate Mighty Joe Jaworski. Many more to be announced in the coming days.

"The Change We Deserve": GOP or Effexor?

Destined to be a classic:

"I begged you to get therapy."

Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73.


Also "The Firm", "Absence of Malice", and many, many others.

He was most recently seen in The Sopranos final season as the doctor/janitor in the prison hospital where Johnny Sac was dying (of cancer, as well), double-checking the diagnosis between passes of the mop on the floor.

And he directed one of the seminal movies from my high school youth, "Jeremiah Johnson".

One of the cinema's titans departs.

Memorial Day Wrangle

Here's the Memorial Day round-up from the Texas Progressive Alliance's member blogs ...

refinish69 at Doing My Part For The Left is trying to understand why John Cornyn is such a.....

McBlogger takes a look at an email from Republican Chair TinaFish begging for money.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders how the Webb County elections administrator can claim one recount where the votes didn't change vindicates their work on the Sheriff's recount where 160 votes flipped.

BossKitty at BlueBloggin tell us how truck owners and operators are delving into long-ignored gas saving subjects like aerodynamics, slower cruising speeds and all the snake oil scams to increase mileage. This could lower your food prices and consumables: Ten mpg is now feasible … may save you money!

Lightseeker of Texas Kaos applies his powers of analysis and persuasion to the question of What Can Be Done to Keep the Momentum for Change Going? What's going on in your precinct to organize for November?

WhosPlayin's grbtexan posted some "rules" guaranteed to invite feminine wrath.

State Rep. Myra Crownover wants West Texas to have their very own radioactive waste dump. North Texas Liberal has the story.

Vince at Capitol Annex notes that the word around Austin is that Rick Perry is planning on calling a special session of the Texas Legislature prior to the November elections. You won't believe why.

Chris Bell is widely rumored to be considering a run for the Texas Senate seat being vacated by Kyle Janek, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs joins the call to encourage him to do so.

Social wing nuts are up to their old tricks, as the TX State Board of Education give the finger to teachers and parents alike this past week. On a 9-6 vote, your kids get a decade's worth of grammar lessons etched on a napkin.

lightseeker over at TexasKaos takes on the question of what to do with all these new Democratic/Progressive activists and voters? Are they doomed to grow quickly disillusioned , retreating into political cynicsm again ? What can be done to keep the momentum for change going?

Gary D at Easter Lemming Liberal News last week blasted Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Michael Williams, Texas Monthly Blogger Paul Burka and Senator John 'Forget the Alamo' Cornyn because he is not bitter but sometimes he gets angry.

Off the Kuff continues his look at the Harris County races with an early overview of the District Clerk campaign.

Texas soldier dies after 100 surgeries

The young Marine came back from the war, with his toughest fight ahead of him.

Sgt. Merlin German waged that battle in the quiet of a Texas hospital, far from the dusty road in Iraq where a bomb exploded, leaving him with burns over 97 percent of his body.

No one expected him to survive.

But for more than three years, he would not surrender. He endured more than 100 surgeries and procedures. He learned to live with pain, to stare at a stranger's face in the mirror. He learned to smile again, to joke, to make others laugh.

He became known as the "Miracle Man."

But just when it seemed he would defy impossible odds, German lost his last battle this spring — an unexpected final chapter in a story many imagined would have a happy ending. ...

Merlin German died after routine surgery to add skin to his lower lip.

He was already planning his next operations — on his wrists and elbows. But Renz also says with all the stress German's body had been subjected to in recent years, "it was probably an unfair expectation that you can keep doing this over and over again and not have any problems."

The cause of his death has not yet been determined.

"I may no more understand why he left us when he did than why he survived when he did," Renz says. "I don't think I was meant to know."

As people learned of his death last month, they flocked to his hospital room to pay their last respects: Doctors, nurses, therapists and others, many arriving from home, kept coming as Friday night faded into Saturday morning.

German was just 22.