Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Hump Day Wrangle from Far Left Texas


Humpin' it to the finish line.


I just don't have the will to post the play-by-play from late last night.  Scott Braddock, Michael Li, and a few other regulars on the #txlege timeline are your go-to for the micro.

Governor Fish Lips gets exposed again as feckless.  All that bragging about the steel in his spine, and it turns out it's jelly.

(Abbott is) so overwhelmed by politics that he’s become a Random Policy Generator, throwing out edicts that make sense only if you forget everything he said before.

[...]

When the former president -- whose political favor Abbott craves -- expresses some disappointment, the Texas governor snaps into line. That disappointment often parallels the views of Donald Trump’s favorite Texas politician, (Lt. Gov. Dan) Patrick.

[...]

This is straight-up schoolyard politics. Trump is a bully. Patrick is egging him on. Abbott is the target, doing everything they want to avoid an electoral wedgie.

An executive order from the governor in August barred cities, counties and other local governments from requiring vaccines. Another one, in May, barred those local governments from requiring people to wear masks.

Now there’s a new executive order that tosses aside some of that “decide for themselves” business.

Abbott wanted a show of strength here, but settled for a sign of weakness. He didn’t hold his ground, instead caving in to demands from conservatives like former state Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas, who’s challenging the governor in next year’s party primary. Huffines is trying to label Abbott a moderate and himself as a Trump-style Republican -- what he calls in his advertising “an actual Republican.” Trump has already endorsed Abbott, but that’s not necessarily his final answer: The former president has shown a willingness to change his preferences in other campaigns.

In terms of his political chances, Huffines is more light breeze than hurricane. But like his former superior in the state Senate, Patrick, he’s a conduit for Trumphobia -- a contagious affliction marked by its conservative victims’ obsession with the goodwill of the former president and of the multitude of voters devoted to him. Abbott has no reason to fear Huffines, but the idea of getting on the former president’s naughty list gives him the shivers.

He’s not alone in that. Dozens of other Republicans have fallen into this particular personality cult. Abbott is seeking reelection next year amid talk that he -- like a small mob of other Republican wannabes -- might be contending for president in 2024.

They want to be in line with Trump’s voters. And in the meantime, that means staying in line with Trump himself. That, for Republicans with ambitions for higher office, is imperative -- almost a mandate.

Weak. As. Rainwater.


In late August, one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s primary challengers, Don Huffines, accused Texas’ child welfare agency of “promoting transgender sexual policies to Texas youth” under a section of its website titled “Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation.”

“These are not Texas values, these are not Republican Party values, but these are obviously Greg Abbott’s values,” Huffines said in a widely circulated video on Twitter. The webpage published by the Department of Family and Protective Services linked to a suicide prevention hotline and other resources “dedicated to helping empower and celebrate” young LGBTQ people.

Within hours, the webpage was gone.


I have said it now about six times, but it's worth repeating: if Governor Strangelove loses, it will be next spring, in his primary.  It won't be a year from now, no matter who's on the ballot.


Some Texans aren't taking his crap any more.


And the corporations supporting the bad actors are getting their comeuppance as well.

The latest AT&T ad.



AT&T, the largest communications provider on the planet, not only connects families and friends, it also "helps fund One America News Network," the ad's narrator boasts. "OANN is a streaming channel that hires radical white nationalists as hosts, cheers the Capitol attacks, and promotes Covid-19 conspiracy theories."

The ad lets us in on what we pay for when we sign up for AT&T, including "OANN host Pearson Sharp to call for mass executions," and "funding politicians like Texas governor Greg Abbott, who pushes radical new laws against voting rights and women's rights."

Wrapping up with its tagline, "AT&T, funding sedition, suppression, and of course, One America News Network," the ad parodies AT&T's false altruism to such a tee, I almost missed it on the first view, mistaking it for a real AT&T ad -- which it might as well be.


Still something funny going on with SWA.


A few more "Texas Capitalists Behaving Badly" updates.

Exxon Mobil Corp. said on Tuesday that a vote to remove the United Steelworkers union (USW) from representing locked-out workers at its Beaumont, Texas, refinery would go forward no matter the outcome of a contract ratification vote next week by those same workers.

USW Local 13-243 announced on Monday night that Beaumont refinery and lubricant oil plant workers would take their first vote on an Exxon contract offer on Oct. 19, six months after they were locked out of their jobs and 10 months after negotiations began.

If you're in the market for a new or used car ... get out.  Those thieves have gone full batshit.


The TADA has always owned the Lege, and now they seem to be pressing their greed to extreme levels, like everybody else.


Texas Monthly also had a story about this.


Moving on to the environment.


And the criminal and social justice news.


Sorry about the FOX news link.


And the soothers.

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Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Tuesday's Wrangle from Far Left Texas


Updates to yesterday's "Stormy":


I'd like to leave Ted Cruz out of this if that's okay.


There are always criminal and social injustice updates.  Every goddamned day.


I have one serious case of schadenfreude this morning.


Same old nothing from Mr. "I think Acevedo has done a good job" on yet another local topic.  Those campaign finance reports and school board races sure do eat up his time, I suppose.  Nobody does hyperlocal better, unless you're needing hot-off-the-press scoops about Alief school bonds.

Make that two cases of schadenfreude.


I'm just laughin' to keep from cryin', y'all.


Why don't you get a jump on the home seller's market and GTFO NOW, Matt?


Last before moving on: an update to yesterday's Wrangle, where LareDOS told us about the Biden admin canceling border wall construction contracts:


One climate update.


Read the woman's thread, please.

Two soothers to end today.

Thousands of years before land speculators like the Allen Brothers arrived in 1836 or slave traders Jim Bowie and Jean Lafitte set up shop on Galveston Island around 1817 -- or even the Spanish conquistador Cabeza de Vaca shipwrecked on the island in 1528 -- there were people living around Buffalo Bayou and the prairies, forests, rivers, and bays of the Texas Gulf Coast.

At least 13,500 years ago, the Akokisa people were living in villages along the coast around Galveston Bay. At the time the coast, along with major rivers flowing across, it extended a hundred miles further out, land and channels now covered by water. Sea level then was hundreds of feet lower.

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Monday, October 11, 2021

The Stormy Wrangle from Far Left Texas

The rough weather blew through leaving North Texas a little windblown and the Gulf Coast a bit wet after a week of nearly ideal fall days.  The forecast for the remaining days of the Texas Legislature's third special session could go either way, and not necessarily depending on your POV.


The freak right wants outlawing vaccine mandates added to the call.  The beleaguered Democrats just want to get out of town and lick their several wounds.  And as the redistricting hearings and votes come to a boil ...


... the litigation on the voting and abortion rights laws kick into high gear.


So a lot of "wait and see" to start the week.

Fortunately (or un-) I have many other links, starting with politics.


I'd like to feel sorry for West, but I can't.  I will miss those push-up challenges, though.


This after Dowd deleted tens of thousands of Tweets in an effort to whitewash his history.  Oh, for the love of long-lost Fleets.

Obviously "stormy" didn't only mean the weather.

Moving on to another Texas corporation (possibly) behaving badly: Southwest Airlines is encountering some turbulence.  Somewhere.


Strange.  So is this.


So I suppose we'll have to wait until things *ahem* clear up a bit to find out what's going on.  Moving right along to a couple of environmental items.


Pots and kettles in Austin introducing themselves.

Here's the criminal and social justice round-up.


Some good news from down at the border: LareDOS reports that the feds have canceled all border wall construction contracts in that city.


With a pair of labor updates:

Amber Briggle makes the economic case for LGBTQ inclusion in the Texas workforce.  And the lockout of USW workers at ExxonMobil's Beaumont refinery -- where my father worked for nearly 40 years as a union member, where my brother and I worked during the summer to put ourselves through college -- appears to be succeeding in busting that union out.

While I highly doubt some fast-tracked SCOTUS case that threatens to strike down Roe v Wade will finally be enough impetus to scare women to the polls -- Wendy Davis drew massive crowds to the state capital in 2014 but ultimately failed to defeat Greg Abbott and even lost the women's vote to him -- it's one of the few things that's getting people into the streets.  In that vein, the Texas Politics Project takes a long view at our state's attitudes towards abortion and anti-abortion laws.  And L'il Kalish speaks to a volunteer driver at the Bridge Collective -- which provides transportation and accommodations to people in central Texas seeking abortions -- about their work.


Just don't, you know, do it with a Republican.  Please.


I should have posted these items marking Indigenous Peoples Day a little higher but that shouldn't detract from the importance of the newly-renamed holiday.

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Sunday, October 10, 2021

Sunday Privilege Funnies

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Saturday, October 09, 2021

The *Heavy Sigh* Wrangle



The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down a lower federal court ruling that temporarily blocked Texas from enforcing its ban on abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

The Department of Justice now has until Oct. 12 to reply to the ruling, and the ban remains in effect until then.

So the horror show is back on.


(I'm sorry to have to point this out again, but clearly this was written and/or scheduled for publication this morning at 5 am without awareness of the 'breaking news' from last night.  Maybe he'll get around to that, but as of 7:30 am ... nada.  Again, my interest in having someone read yesterday's newspaper to me is less than zero, but people can be a little, shall we say, stuck in their ways.  After all, I would've thought the Catholic Church had ended itself a long time ago ...)


So unless a court intervenes, we'll get to see a Sheila Jackson Lee versus Al Green primary for the 9th Congressional District of Texas.  Perhaps one of them will retire before then, but ...


I completely empathize with the Romans who fed Christians to the lions.  I just wish they had been able to do more of that.

There are some small arcs bending toward justice.


Here's what passes for my business round-up.

A story told many times recently but needs repeating:


There was a good listing of distractions in yesterday's post, so I'll just add this one and then get my Saturday going to more enjoyable pursuits.

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Friday, October 08, 2021

The Snarky Wrangle from Far Left Texas


Slightly more serious but no less bad-intentioned ...


John Cornyn couldn't find his ass if he used both hands and a full-length mirror.


This isn't really "analysis", but that isn't Ross Ramsey's fault: "When Texas legislators admit they don’t know what they’re doing".


Not a fan, but if Kim Olson is the only way to get rid of Gilberto Hinojosa, then Tex Donks ought to go ahead and bust that move.  El Padron has had plenty of years to get something, anything done and failed.  Well past time for new blood, but I seriously doubt Olson is the one.


As usual, don't hold your breath waiting for Chaz Kuffner to weigh on this topic.  Speaking of the Yankees ...


Okay then.  A few more sharp elbows.


Another great fall weekend ahead, so get outdoors and do something fun.


And if you're staying put or staying inside ...

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Thursday, October 07, 2021

All Hell (and Lots of News) Broke Yesterday


I had real difficulty just following all of these stories on the Twitter machine.


In order to block the law, Pitman crafted an injunction to “halt existing S.B. lawsuits and prevent new suits from being maintained by the state judiciary.” He forbade state judges and clerks from “accepting or docketing” these cases, and, for good measure, barred “private individuals who act on behalf of the state” from filing them. Finally, he ordered Texas to “publish this preliminary injunction on all of its public-facing court websites with a visible, easy-to-understand instruction to the public that S.B. 8 lawsuits will not be accepted by Texas courts.”

[...]

Perhaps most importantly, Pitman chose not to center the sufferings of the Supreme Court justices who feel beleaguered by the demands of the shadow docket, or of Texas, which seeks to overturn Roe v Wade without being hassled by precedent or legal arguments. Instead, in footnote after footnote, Pitman centers the pregnant people who have relied on the courts to vindicate their rights, and excoriates the state for hurting them, for lying about it, and for its cynical attempts to circumnavigate the rule of law. “From the moment S.B. 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution,” he wrote. “That other courts may find a way to avoid this conclusion is theirs to decide; this Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.”

One can only guess what will happen to Pitman’s order at the 5th Circuit -- which could quickly halt his injunction. It is even less clear what could happen at the Supreme Court, where five ultra-conservative justices seem to think S.B. 8’s devious design lets them off the hook. But for the first time in over a month, Texas women were visible and their needs were urgent to a federal court. And while that may not suffice to reinstitute the right to choose, it is the first glimpse of justice since the twisted Texas law took effect.


^This^ is the executive summary if your time is tight.  Here are deeper dives.


If you're anything like me, you're assessing your cut-the-cord options (or your cutting AT&T out of your life options).  I send these assholes more than $300 a month for wireless and satellite service, and that is going to end ASAP.


This news -- and the ATT developments, along with this heavily-promoted story from the TexTrib about who's funding the border wall -- Bigfooted Greg Abbott and his pals down in Mission yesterday.


Ted Cruz also tried to change the subject, but made himself look like ...


So I shouldn't have been surprised that this hasn't gotten any traction.


Back In Austin, the Lege is still bullying trans kids.


And on the local politics scene, two developments.  First from Bexar County ...


And Sly Turner plays the race card in his still-enlarging scandal over housing contracts awarded to his former law partner.


"We have weathered together many storms and challenges over my last six years. Many. This is another and it is important to weather," Turner told council members. "[I will weather] this one for future leaders who will come behind me and if you allow me to say this, who look like me. ... It's important for me to weather this storm for the future leaders who will sit in this chair, who may look like me, and that's important to me."

I would rather not see the mayor use the Clarence Thomas defense.

The criminal and social justice news just keeps on coming.


And it looks as if Exxon Mobil is succeeding in busting out the Steelworkers union from their Beaumont plant.


This afternoon is Tesla's shareholders meeting, which you can watch at the link below.  I'll be interested to see if Elon Musk announces he's relocating corporate HQ to Austin.


And one calm-me-down.

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