The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone a happy and balanced equinox as it brings you this week's roundup of lefty blog posts from around the Lone Star State.

Off the Kuff stands with Ahmed.

Socratic Gadfly turns a bit of a skeptical eye to European panic over the Syrian refugee crisis and provides some critical analysis of how it's being handled.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos, and contributing to Daily Kos, tried her very best to watch the second GOP presidential debate but she just couldn't take it any more. She hung in there for two hours and twenty minutes. GOP Debate: A trip back to the Twilight Zone

Tired of watching Bernie Sanders surge, Clinton surrogates grabbed the 'socialist' brush and started smearing him.  PDiddie at Brains and Eggs is pretty certain that this is how it's going to go until the Sanders campaign no longer represents a threat to her coronation nomination.

Starring David Brock as The Elephant

WCNews at Eye on Williamson sees it becoming clear that the GOP in Texas has no problem with the cuts to Medicaid therapy. They just don't want to be blamed for it: Abbott, GOP want cuts, but no blame.

jobsanger notes that the so-called economic recovery still hasn't reached the middle class.

nonsequiteuse instructs a Houston bar not to use her as an excuse to practice bigotry.

TXsharon at Bluedaze documents another worker's death from fatal fracking vapors.

Neil at All People Have Value said that Alexander Hamilton should remain on the $10 bill. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

And Egberto Willies passes along the Paul Krugman viewpoint the GOP's one-percenters will not allow Donald Trump to secure the nomination... but not for the reasons you might think.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Grits for Breakfast linked to the coverage of the chase for justice in Smith County.

The Texas Observer psoted on the Fifth Circuit's reversal of the convictions of Citgo's Corpus Christi refinery in violation of the Clean Air Act.

Somervell County Salon passes along the reporting about the anti-SLAPP legislation pending in Congress.

The TSTA Blog salutes education reporter Terrence Stutz on his retirement.

Paradise in Hell annotates Donald Trump's Texas speech, and celebrates its first year of blogging.

Texas Clean Air Matters explains why parents should care about climate change.

David Ortez reports from a Houston mayoral forum on issues facing younger voters.

Danyahel Norris illustrates the importance of Houston's equal rights ordinance.

Lawflog recounts the ongoing tussle between the Booger County Mafia and the city of Hearne's residents.

Finally, the TPA congratulates Lize Burr on her new positions as editor and publisher of the Burnt Orange Report.

Sunday Funnies, Not Debatable edition

Coming to you live

After years of faithful service, my Toshiba Satellite (running Vista, no less!) finally gave up the ghost.  So henceforth Brains will be coming at you with the latest Lenovo technology (4GB and 1 terabyte of memory with Windows 8.1 for awhile until I feel comfortable on it, then upgrading to 10).  While we get back up to posting speed, share with me your experiences running and playing on 8 and 10, please.

My first download is going to be my AdBlocker Plus.  How do you people tolerate all these obnoxious ads?

Fright Night went pie fight

If you read yesterday's predictive analysis, and then watched some of the proceedings (or better yet, followed it on Twitter) then you know things went pretty much according to script.

Trump got beat up.

But whether it was the rattled moment after Jeb Bush dinged him for trying to buy his way into the Florida casino business or when he sputtered through what was (without him) a thoughtful foreign policy discussion, the emperor of the Republican field certainly looked like he forgot his clothes on Wednesday. And that was before his crazy answer on vaccines and autism, or his utter vanquishing at the hands of Carly Fiorina, responding to his comment about her face. 

The other candidates, better polished and better prepared than last time, came across as people who know stuff. Their discussions about government shutdowns, foreign policy, and drug policy had, by the standards of these things, some degree of depth. 

And Trump was noticeably muted through all that.

Maybe his back was hurting from standing for three hours.

Speaking of Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO—so far the lone success story from the undercard debate—built on her success there and showed that her fight to get onto the main stage in the first place was worth it. She not only slayed Trump, she showed she could be the outsider to beat. 

Her answer about defunding Planned Parenthood got some of the loudest applause of the night—second only, perhaps, to her response to Jake Tapper’s question about Trump’s remarks on her appearance.

There's your winner winner, chicken dinner, folks.  She's gonna be movin' on up again.

Beyond that, this was a night of missed opportunities for Jeb Bush, another deer-in-the-headlights moment for Ben Carson, a weed meme, and the same old elephant in the room.  Oh, and Ted Cruz lied about Planned Parenthood again.

It's as entertaining as watching the Housewives of Beverly Hills until you realize one of these morons is going to be on the ballot in November 2016, and that millions of other morons are going to vote for him -- or her -- without a second thought.  Joke's over.

ABC's "9 moments that mattered" is only eight; throw out the one about Rubio.  And this is what 'post-debate spin' looks like.

Did anybody ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz when we're going to have some Democratic debates?  Why, yes they did, and she happens to be thrilled that the clamor for more is being drowned out by the Republicans' food fighting.  Now that's leadership.

Update: Fiorina's star turn -- though she was hideously wrong on climate change, and hyperbolic on Planned Parenthood -- isn't going to last, according to No More Mister Nice because she's not country enough.  That's a fair point, but I think she's got enough crazy going on that the Teabagger base can get along with her.  I still say she's going to fit well as a running mate for anybody except Donald Trump.  And more and better from Vox on all of this, with nearly no mention of Scott Walker or Chris Christie or Rand Paul or Marco Rubio.  That's precisely accurate.  Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham's tete-a-tete on immigration in the matinee got more play than Mike Huckabee.  That nails it as well.

Fight Night II

Or Fright Night, if you'd rather.

The Republican primary field looks very different today than it did nearly six weeks ago, when the first debate was held in Cleveland. Donald Trump has added to his lead, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina are starting to show momentum — and some of the others are in danger of joining Rick Perry in falling off the map. A lot is riding on how the top 11 candidates, and the four in the undercard forum, handle the questions from CNN’s moderators at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Here is a rundown on where the race stands and what each of the candidates needs to do to stay competitive.

-- Trump is coming off back-to-back days of massive rallies, in Dallas and in Los Angeles. He spoke to roughly 15,000 people Monday inside the American Airlines Center, home of the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars, and on Tuesday he held a rally aboard the 887-foot-long USS Iowa, a decommissioned battleship in the port of Los Angeles. He continues a steady rise in the polls, although his velocity has decreased somewhat. The question is, does this debate mark the beginning of a downward trend for Trump, or can he actually keep gaining in popularity? He’s led the pack now for almost two months, going from the mid-single digits in early July to the clear frontrunner, at 22 percent, in the space of a few weeks. He’s now at 30 percent, but his negatives are very high with a significant number of voters. Political observers have gone through different stages in their reactions to Trump. First came amusement, then mockery, and we have now been in the mild to moderate alarm phase for a few weeks. What happens with Trump on Wednesday night and in the following days will determine whether the GOP establishment goes into action and does what it can to derail and take down the demagogic anti-politician.

Trump is starting to lose women, which is the first data point that his act is finally getting tired.  (But so is Hillary Clinton, a more shocking turn of events.)

-- Carson is arguably the story of the last month, even if he has been overshadowed in the press by Trump’s “perpetual attention machine.” Carson has come from the middle of the pack to now a clear second place, at around 18 percent. And that’s despite a performance at the first debate that most political experts thought was forgettable and unimpressive. But clearly Carson’s lack of experience and absence of establishment connections has benefited him. Now, however, the soft-spoken retired surgeon is becoming a target. He and Trump have sparred recently. And he’ll be under a much bigger microscope than he’s ever experienced.

There is no apparent reason for a neurosurgeon who disbelieves climate change to be rising in the polls except that he benefits from the Herman Cain Effect, which is a wormy calculus swirling in the conservative hive mind that tells them African Americans of all political persuasions will vote for an African American even if he's as lousy a candidate as Cain or Dr. Carson.  Large portions of the Republican racist base believe they can defeat any Democrat by splitting the black vote.  I would like to see this theory tested, which is the only reason I'd like to see Carson maintain his standing near the top of the polls.

-- Jeb Bush has to improve his debate performance. The good news for him is that it won’t be incredibly difficult to do better than he did in Cleveland. The bad news is that he is cratering in the polls. Donors are restless. Bush is flying commercial now to some events rather than on a private jet, a telltale sign of a campaign that is tightening its purse strings. Still, Bush retains significant advantages in his ability to raise money and field a national organization capable of driving supporters to the polls in a drawn-out primary. [...] If he can deliver any kind of body blow to Trump, that would be a huge win for Bush. But at the very least, he needs to show more forcefulness and clarity.

Bush won't be able to lay a glove on Trump.  He can only hope that Trump's mouth eventually does him in.  And even when that finally happens, Bush will see little of the electoral benefit.

-- The freshman U.S. senator from Texas continues to watch the rise of the non-politicians — Trump and Carson and Fiorina — and waits with open arms for the moment when the bottom falls out of their candidacies. Cruz advisers have watched Trump show up to events with little to no organizational effort to identify and collect contact information from supporters. They don’t think he has any capacity to translate his current popularity into votes, even if he doesn’t implode. “I think we are in a breakout moment,” a Cruz adviser said recently. But Cruz does need Trump to lose some altitude for that to happen. Cruz is focusing his energies on denouncing President Obama’s Iran deal, on defunding Planned Parenthood, and on talking about religious liberty. He is third in Iowa and positioned quite well for the fall. He needs to avoid any big errors or damaging moments.

A lot of luck has to break Cruz's way, but I think it is more likely than not that he stands to benefit from the deflation of The Donald, and Mike Huckabee, and the other weaklings mentioned at the end here.

My prediction today is that Ted Cruz will be one of two left standing sometime next spring.

-- Political observers have expressed surprise that Marco Rubio did not reap any real benefit from the first debate, where most agreed that he was among the most impressive. But the U.S. senator from Florida continues to play the role of the tortoise. He does not have a large, expensive campaign and so he does not have to worry about sustaining a massive fundraising effort. He is making smart organizational moves to position himself well in Nevada, which goes fourth in the primary process. His campaign said not to expect any surprises. He’ll be looking to hit singles and doubles, counterpunch if and when he’s attacked, and stay within himself. There’s not a lot of incentive for others to go after him at the moment, however, so it is likely to be clear sailing for him.

Stranger things have happened.

-- The former Hewlett-Packard CEO was the breakout performer from Cleveland. She wasn’t even in the primetime debate, but her eloquence and charisma onstage, as well as in an interview afterward with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, vaulted her into the national conversation and bumped her polling average up to as high as 6 percent in mid-August. She has lost a little momentum since then, but was also given a gift by Trump when he insulted her looks in an interview with a Rolling Stone reporter. Fiorina spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said the Reagan Library debate is “another opportunity for us to introduce Carly to a lot of voters. She still has among the lowest name ID in the field.”

Fiorina is most likely to be someone's vice presidential ticketmate.  Not Donald Trump's but somebody's. The latest news about 30,000 more layoffs at HP should provide easy debate fodder for the debate mods and tough questions for her.

-- Scott Walker has fallen the furthest of any candidate since the debate in Cleveland. For a sampling of all that has been written about his woes, just Google “Scott Walker struggles.” Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), a supposed ally of Walker’s, said in a recent Molly Ball look at Walker’s downward trend, “At some point he will figure out what he actually believes.” Walker has been going the wrong direction for months. He has developed a reputation as a flip-flopper. His campaign knows he needs to have a strong performance at the Reagan Library. “He didn’t use all of his time” in response to every question during the first debate, said an adviser. “He recognizes he can work on that” and that he needs to show “a bit more energy and contrast.” The nod to “contrast” is a signal that Walker will be more aggressive in critiquing others in the field. But Walker also remains in fourth place in Iowa. His favorables are high there. He may need to stop the bleeding, but he doesn’t need to panic yet. “We’re playing the long game,” the adviser said.

As much as he has already lost, he still has the most to lose.

-- The former Arkansas governor may have hoped that his rally outside the Carter County Detention Center in northeast Kentucky, on behalf of the county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, would have given him a bigger bump than he has experienced. And that may still come. But you can bet that Huckabee will bring up his role in the Kim Davis saga. It might be interesting to see what he says if Cruz “mentions” that Huckabee’s staffers prevented Cruz from going onstage and speaking. Clearly, Huckabee wanted the spotlight for himself. But it might be too rich for Cruz, who himself loves the stage, to complain about it.

Mike Huckabee will never be the nominee.  As crazy as the rest of the field is, Huck is just too far gone for even the worst of the GOP base.

-- Like Fiorina, John Kasich’s polling average was so low around the time of the first debate that it’s not visible on the Real Clear Politics graph. And also like Fiorina, the Ohio governor was one of the most talked-about surprise candidates in Cleveland. The home crowd gave Kasich a huge ovation, he made some waves with his welcoming rhetoric toward gays and lesbians, and he has since seized third place in New Hampshire polling, where he is now discussed as a major obstacle there for Bush ­— who is seen as needing to do well in the state since he has little chance to win Iowa. Kasich needs a solid performance here, but nothing spectacular. He just needs to keep his modest momentum going and keep plugging away in New Hampshire.

Frankly, it's Kasich that I worry about the most.  In a saner conservative environment, he'd be the guy at the lead.  And he could still get there.  He's my choice to be standing with Cruz in the rubble of the mid- to late 2016 primary season.



Rand Paul, Chris Christie, and -- once again at the little table -- Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki are all dead men running.  Rick Perry is saving them a seat at the bar for whenever the third debate happens.

Clintonites draw the long knives

They've had enough of all this Sanders surging, and they're not going to take it any more.  From good old Ted's (he likes Bernie, don't forget) Facebook page, Tommy Christopher at The Daily Banter goes off his medication.

After a long summer spent feuding with #BlackLivesMatter and alienating Obama coalition voters, Senator Bernie Sanders appeared to be going in the right direction with black voters. He released a pretty decent racial justice platform, stopped telling people how his 1960s-era activism gave him a lifetime hood pass, and hasn’t openly pined for white voters in months. None of this appears to have translated in the polls, though, as Sanders’ support remains overwhelmingly white, so Bernie made some moves this week. 

First, he decided that drafting Dr. Cornel West as his most prominent black surrogate would somehow be a good idea, which would have worked if Sanders had a flux capacitor and a DeLorean set to 2007. Here in the present, Cornel West  is about as appealing to black voters as a Rand Paul lectureon black party identification. West has been among the most unhinged of Obama critics.

That's probably enough horse shit for anybody to have to consume for the rest of the week.  Christopher used to write for Mediaite, and links to himself nine times in those two paragraphs above.  Click on over to the original and you can quickly get the gist of what the Daily Banter and Christopher are all about by scrolling to the end of this frothing screed, and see what else they have been blogging about.

Whatever the Clintons are paying him, it ain't enough.

It's also pretty low-rent for one of her super PACs to have veered hard right in comparing Sanders to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (RIP) and the UK Labour Party's Jeremy Corbyn, or for center-right Democrats to infer Corbyn is an anti-Semite in a redefinition of the term 'guilt-by-association', and conflate all of this into the usual Clinton surrogate slime-stew they are so effective at pumping out.

But hey, that's politics, as they say.  Right now these little skirmishes are just geek fights on social media and out-of-the-way places online like The DB and Brains and Eggs.  In a couple of weeks you'll start to see more of it as these smears bubble up to the various 24-7 Trump Channels (and you know which lamestream media outlets I'm talking about).

To paraphrase the name of the rabid super PAC run by the odious David Brock above, let's Correct the Record.  Here's a more even-handed interpretation of Dr. West and his motivations.  If you'd like to better understand why Clinton's cronies are so hysterically desperate to slow Sanders' growing support among blacks, here you go.  And last, the Democratic establishment has capitulated, and now wants to wade into the same plutocracy pool the Republicans have been scuba-diving in for a couple of years now.

I wrote in June that Bernie Sanders wasn't going to get the Democratic nomination unless he started to attract minority support from Hillary Clinton.  And that is precisely what her goons are now trying to prevent.  The South Carolina primary will be the ultimate test, but between now and next February -- just five months away -- the battle will be won or lost.

We just get to wait and see what develops.

Update: More on this emerging phenomenon of coordinated strikes on the Sanders campaign from Balloon Juice and No More Mister Nice Blog.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance knows that no one has a constitutional right to be a county clerk as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff takes a look at the very high stakes of the voter ID appeal.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos, and contributing to Daily Kos, asks why the U.S. cannot have high speed rail that is common in Europe and Asia? Why? The do-nothing GOP, of course. Republican are why we can't have nice things.

Socratic Gadfly, linking to the first piece he has written for an in-depth philosophy and social sciences webzine, explores the parallels between Constitutional originalism and religious fundamentalism.

The best debate in the Houston mayoral contest happened last Thursday night, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs blogged about it.

Texas Leftist agrees with President Obama; the economic future of the United States may soon be inextricably linked to the world's next great power player. Here's why it's time for Texas to take a new look at Africa. Plus some coverage as the Houston Unites campaign kicks into high gear.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson understands that the Texas GOP has a problem with health care. They hate it and it shows: Common sense conservatism is bad for your health.

JohnCoby at Bay Area Houston took note of Ted Cruz locking up the coveted Kentucky hillbilly vote.  "Lock up."  Get it?

TXSharon at Bluedaze caught the Texas Railroad Commission sitting on the lap of a fracker.

Egberto Willies documents more of the slow-but-steady rise of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.

Neil at All People Have Value was glad to see local outreach by the Harris County Green Party on Labor Day. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

A rally in Dallas tonight for Donald Trump will be preceded by a "Dump the Trump" protest march through downtown during rush-hour, according to Trail Blazers.

Juanita Jean unloads on Houston mayoral candidate Ben Hall.

Grits for Breakfast calls out Dan Patrick for misleading and incendiary rhetoric about crime and the police.

The TSTA Blog rebuts a Wall Street Journal op-ed on the recent SCOTUS charter school ruling.

Prairie Weather uncovers how America became the land of gross inequality and the home of dangerous coverups.

Steve Bates marvels at the self-realization of some Republicans that another government shutdown -- this time over defunding Planned Parenthood -- might not benefit their general cause.

Carol Morgan would like to know how to pronounce "Mission Accomplished" in Arabic.

jobsanger caught the YouGov poll that said 43% of Republicans would be in favor of a military takeover of the US government.

Liz Goulding looks back on three years of being a one-car household.

The Bloggess celebrated World Suicide Prevention Day.

And Fascist Dyke Motors is waiting on Alex Trebek.