The Weekly Wrangle

This week from the Texas Progressive Alliance blogs, emission from drilling are more than cars and airports, women are running things in Denton County, Liberty University Democrats lose their recognition, President Obama's political coalition leaves out the far-right and the poor, and much more.

This week’s round-up was compiled by Teddy from Left of College Station.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston notes that Rick Perry signed a bill to stop electricity deregulation in East Texas while we poor saps continue to be screwed with high electricity rates.

On Bluedaze: Barnett Shale operators continued to endanger public health and safety by ignoring the peer-reviewed study that showed emission from drilling were more than all the cars and airports in the DFW area. Now the TCEQ data supports the findings. Smog-forming nitrogen oxides and volatile organic emissions for the entire 19-counties of the Barnett Shale area are approximately 200 tons per day.

Jesus Hussein Christ, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs agrees with John Cornyn.

Castle Hills Democrats proclaims that, in Denton County, "The Women Are Running Things Now".

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that Republican ambition is messing with Perry, Hutchison and Cornyn. Who cares about Hispanic or female voters?

DosCentavos is no longer a Blogspot blog but now at DosCentavos.net, exclusively!

WCNews at Eye On Williamson points out the important issues that are being neglected as the 81st Legislative Session winds down: Lack of leadership in Texas is painfully obvious.

Teddy at Left of College Station writes about the sexist and racist attacks by the usual conservative voices on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, and on Liberty University’s decision to no longer recognize the College Democrats as an official student organization because of their endorsement of pro-choice and pro-gay rights candidates.

McBlogger takes another look at the dump near Andrews after he finds out it'll be taking not just radioactive waste, but PCB saturated dirt from the Hudson Valley. In New York.

Off the Kuff takes a look at a wrench in the 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary named Leo Berman.

At Texas Kaos, Lightseeker asks the question: What do the powerful do when reform is eminent? (Hint, there's a lotta money to be made in fake reforms ...)

Neil at Texas Liberal says that President Obama's political coalition leaves out the far-right and and the most poor. Neil also reports that he will be master of ceremonies at a huge punk rock blast in Cincinnati this coming August 15.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is appalled at the short-sighted vision of of Texas politicians. If you donate to their campaign, you are free to destroy the land, air and water of a great state. You can have the blessings of all the state and federal agencies you need to pull off a hazardous trick. It's all posted in Rick Perry and Friends Welcome Toxic Burritos.

General Motors quietly slips into BK

A little later today:

General Motors Corp., the world’s largest automaker for 77 years, will file for bankruptcy today, a landmark for an industry that defined American economic might. The filing, which GM executives said last year wouldn’t happen, marks the plunge of a company that used to make more than half the cars bought in the U.S., including the Corvette, the Cadillac and the Pontiac GTO.

Word has been leaking out since last week to soften the blow to the American psyche. From $40 a share to 75 cents over the past two years.

The “new GM” will get $30.1 billion in bankruptcy financing from the government, and the Treasury “does not anticipate providing any additional assistance” after that, the Obama administration said Sunday in a statement. The federal government will have a 60 percent equity stake in the retooled automaker, and 12 percent will be held by the Canadian government, which is lending $9.5 billion to the company.

Everybody takes a hit:

The United Auto Workers’ health trust fund for retirees, which is owed $20 billion by GM, will be replaced by a new entity that will own 17.5 percent of the new company with warrants to purchase an additional 2.5 percent. Bondholders and other creditors would get a 10 percent stake in the new GM, with warrants for an additional 15 percent, in exchange for $27.1 billion unsecured debt.

Administration officials said GM will have to comply with executive compensation limits the Treasury announced in February for financial institutions that receive more than $500 million in federal funds, as well as the so-called Dodd Amendment. The provision is named after Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, who attached the pay restrictions to the $787 billion economic stimulus bill Congress passed on Feb. 13.

Those restrictions place a $500,000 salary cap on the top five executives at banks, and the 20 most highly paid employees below them, and require them to forgo cash bonuses.

Good luck to a leaner, meaner General Bull Moose.

Freak Right assassinates clinic physician

If this guy weren't Christian and Caucasian and Kansan, we would be calling him a terrorist and all of his friends a terror cell:

The suspect in custody for the slaying of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller was a member of an anti-government group in the 1990s and a staunch opponent of abortion.

Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kan., a Kansas City suburb, was arrested on Interstate 35 near Gardner in suburban Johnson County, Kan., about three hours after the shooting. Tiller was shot to death around 10 a.m. inside Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita.

In the rear window of the 1993 blue Ford Taurus that he was driving was a red rose, a symbol often used by abortion opponents. On the rear of his car was a Christian fish symbol with the word "Jesus" inside.

Those who know Roeder said he believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide.

Ah, another Army of God lemming. Dr. Tiller was killed as he handed out programs at the conclusion of his church's service.

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said.

"Robert Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds," she said. "Then [Roeder] said, 'I've seen you now.' Then he turned his back and walked away, and they were scared to death. On the way out, he gave me a great big hug and he said, 'I've seen you in the newspaper. I just love what you're doing.'"

Hunter:

Isn't that lovely. Make an obvious threat to a doctor, then enjoy a hug with a fellow "activist". Go visit someone who went to prison for shooting Dr. Tiller, and just happen to meet his future killer.

What a tight little goddamn family they have. I wonder how many of the people issuing statements condemning this murder have shaken this guy's hand or exchanged a "great big hug" with this bomb-making, government-hating anti-abortion terrorist.

Kind of tempted to suspend my objection to the death penalty in this case, but if I did that would make me as barbaric as them. So let's settle for prosecution of Roeder for murder in the first and all of his "sympathizers" for conspiracy under federal terrorism legislation.

If they are not punished, then their sleeper cells all across the nation will be emboldened to strike again.

Jesus Hussein Christ, I agree with John Cornyn

"I think it's terrible... This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent."

Cornyn dismissed Limbaugh and Gingrich, adding: "Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don't think it's appropriate. I certainly don't endorse it. I think it's wrong."

Corndog, whose charge this cycle includes getting more Republicans elected to the Senate, is awake and smelling the coffee. The RNC (Rush, Newt, Cheney) is demonstrating high douchebaggery with every broadcast utterance for the past week, but it's all for naught and Cornyn knows it. The Grand Obsolete Party cannot so much as muster a filibuster in the Senate, nor can they allow Sotomayor to sail to confirmation without looking flaccid. So they are boxed in with their base, struggling to placate the radicals who are shrinking the party.

The squeals of "racist" drive more independents and swing voters away in droves. The lesser insults are doing the same thing. The most hilarious assertion flung from the herd of Irrelephants came from former Bush brain Karl Rove, who knows people who went to Yale and Harvard who weren't all that smart, nyuck nyuck. Rove and Limbaugh -- neither of whom could complete a baccalaureate program at second-rate colleges -- calling a Harvard Phi Beta Kappa unintelligent has to be as high as hypocrisy can stretch.

But I bet they can beat that next week.

Anyway, kudos to Cornyn for speaking out against the unelected leadership of his party and calling for civility in the consideration of Judge Sotomayor's appointment to the SCOTUS. And let's see If Limbaugh bashes him on the radio on Monday.

Sunday Funnies

John Culberson's bid for the "Douchebag"

It's going to take a super-human effort for anyone to top him this week. Let's go to the videotape -- and keep an eye on his gestures:



Update: Susan's Big Blue Butt piles on.

Chubbed to death

Good news: Voter ID died quietly last night. Bad news: So did unemployment insurance funds of $555 million in federal stimulus dollars to be extended to the 200,000 Texans who are unemployed.

Republicans paid a little back for being bamboozled on the single greatest issue facing Texans today by talking the UEI extension to death last night:

Expanded jobless benefits for laid-off Texans, more health insurance for thousands of low-income children and reform of windstorm insurance rates for coastal residents all were in peril of dying Tuesday because of the lingering House battle over voter identification legislation.

A final clash at midnight killed both the voter identification measure as well as the unemployment benefits expansion. The legislation to help average Texans through children’s health and windstorm insurance also appeared to be dead, but those issues have a better chance at resurrection before the session ends June 1. ...

Democrats dropped their delay tactics shortly before 9 p.m. Tuesday as Speaker Pro Tempore Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, announced: “We’re going to rock and roll for awhile.” The Democrats brought up the unemployment benefits bill at about 11:35 p.m., but Republicans kept the debate going until they could kill it on the midnight deadline.

Dead legislation: a bill to legalize concealed handguns on college campuses.

Presumed dead: a requirement that women sign a waiver to decline a sonogram before having an abortion.

Critically ill: an expansion of the state’s unemployment insurance system to obtain $555 million in federal stimulus funds. The legislation was set to be next on the House agenda if the extended debate on the non-controversial bills ever ended.

Most of these deaths were a relief. The exception, obviously, was what had Friendswood Republican Larry Taylor grinning from ear to ear very early this morning:

Well, if Rick Perry, Joe Straus, David Dewhurst and their GOP conspirators couldn't successfully deny the vote to hundreds of thousands of Texans, they succeeded in denying them unemployment benefits.

I've seen a lot of black-hearted things in the Capitol, but I've never been as disgusted as I was when I saw GOP House Caucus Chair Larry Taylor grinning like the Cheshire Cat as Straus and his henchmen used the very device they'd been whining about -- slow talking -- to kill the unemployment insurance bill.

They were grinning like cats, but they were behaving like wee, witless errand-folk for Perry. Perry opposed the UI bill because he had to object to something in the federal stimulus package. Refusing a few hundred million from Barack Obama seemed just the ticket to raise his creep-cred with the far right. Even if it raised taxes on businesses about $700 million. Even if it increased the suffering of 200,000 Texans who've lost their jobs because G.W. Bush and Perry almost destroyed the economy.

Joe Straus has spent the entire legislative session in an undisclosed location, abdicating the Speaker's dais to the pro-tem, Galveston Democrat Craig Eiland. With the voter ID bill scheduled first on the legislative calendar last week, the GOP refused compromises from Democrats to consider other bills ahead of it, and that's when the filibuster began. Taylor again with the script straight from Limbaugh:

At one point, Taylor, the Republican leader, said compromising with the Democrats would be like negotiating with "kidnappers or terrorists." He hastened to add that he wasn't likening Democrats to criminals but compared them to "whiny kids throwing a fit on the floor."

Ah, the art of diplomacy. Taylor just never learned how to color within the lines.

Can you spell "special session"? I knew you could.

Update: Grits for Breakfast has more, specifically on the criminal justice legislation which passed gently into that good night.