Do something nice for a stranger today

Just because:

On Sept. 11, Jacob Sundberg of San Antonio has pledged to make eye contact and smile at everyone he meets. Kaitlin Ulrich will bring goody baskets to the police and fire departments in and around Philadelphia. And 100 volunteers from New York –- 9/11 firefighters and family members among them –- are going to Groesbeck, Texas, to rebuild a house destroyed by a tornado last December.

This is a minute sampling of the hundreds of thousands of people who have pledged to memorialize those killed on 9/11 by doing something good for others.

The heroic acts of all those killed trying to save others that September morning has spawned a growing grass-roots movement. The goal is to ensure that future generations remember not just the horror of the attacks, but also the extraordinary outpouring of humanity during the days, weeks, and months that followed.

"It was the worst possible day imaginable, and in some ways, a remarkable day, too, in the way in which people responded," says David Paine, cofounder of myGoodDeed.org. "We need to rekindle the way we came together in the spirit of 9/11: It would be almost as much a tragedy to lose that lesson.

No more snark today. Must go out and find a Good Samaritan opportunity.

Won't you join me?

Poll dancing

(No Hillary cleavage humor, please.)

John Edwards won Texas. Those results mirror high-profile national online polling among the Democratic netroots. And that's beginning to translate into polling strength offline as well.

Four months before the first votes get cast -- be they in Iowa or New Hampshire or somewhere else -- the front-running Clinton may have already peaked. If Biden and Dodd were to withdraw tomorrow, could she count on their supporters joining her? Maybe. What about Bill Richardson? When he finally concedes (all due respect to mi hermano Stace) he's almost certainly going to endorse her, and not just because he wants to be her running mate.

A more intriguing question is: what if Clinton does get the nod and then Dennis Kucinich -- or better yet, Edwards -- runs as an independent? A Green, perhaps?

With Frederick of Hollywood assuming a lead among the fractured Republicans jostling to bear the elephantine standard, is a challenge from the far right in the offing (Tancreepo or Dunkin' Hunter on a rabid-base issue like immigration)?

Or better yet: what about a challenge from the left of the right -- Ron Paul running as a Libertarian? Remember he has previously been their presidential nominee once before.

What if our choices in November of 2008 were, say, Clinton/Richardson, Edwards/Kucinich, Thompson/Tommy Franks and Ron Paul/Michael Badnarik (the 2004 Lib nominee)?

Could we all get a little excited about an election like that?

Noriega, Ratcliffe, blogs and politics

Geez I hate having to skip a good blogswarm.

RG Ratcliffe wrote this, and several of my blog brethren responded to it (some of us pretty irritated, some of us less so). A couple on our side even shot their pots at us (but one of them apologized for reacting in haste).

Then Rick Noriega got on the phone with us -- not me, again -- and also got online over here and explained the context of the remarks. And apologized for making them.

Oh, and RG responded to our response. All the while -- over the past 36 hours or so -- I was busy with business and preparing for our fall vacation. So all I managed to do was dash off a note to the Noriega campaign Sunday afternoon, to which I received an almost immediate and satisfactory response. So I missed the whole thing, dammit.

But I do have time for a condensed version of the brouhaha, so here's the abridged Ratcliffe:

I allowed my good name and respected reputation to be used like a dishrag by an operative of the Mikal Watts campaign, but if I were to admit that, then I would lose the remaining shredded tatters of my credibility .... therefore, I'll laugh the whole thing off by accusing bloggers of being thin-skinned while reframing my article as a service to the readers of the the Chronic and the Express-Snooze, which are legion compared to those DFHs who blog in their underwear.

Oh yes, and also in dedicated service to the unwashed masses who haven't yet grasped the intricacies of the "Internets" and how it is used for political organizing.

Don't be prickly about the criticism, RG. It's just part of the game.

The Weekly Wrangle

Time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's Blog Round Up, brought to us once again by Vince from Capitol Annex.

Do You Ever Feel Like Cassandra? Gary Denton at Easter Lemming Liberal News is beginning to feel like Cassandra again over Iran: condemned to know the future but unable to convince others to prevent it.

Port Arthur gets shipped several hundred thousand gallons of a waste byproduct of the chemical nerve agent VX for incineration, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs reveals that neither a federal judge nor the TCEQ nor Rick Perry did anything to stop it.

Over at Three Wise Men, Nat-Wu notes that whether or homosexuality is a choice or not, everyone deserves the same rights.

Blogging at the University of North Texas Democrats' site, Adam Silva of Three Wise Men notes that pundits are over-analyzing polls in the 2008 presidential race.

Hal at Half Empty blogs about some hot water Mikal Watts got into over a letter he wrote to another attorney talking about contributions to judges.

Stace Medellin at Dos Centavos reports on a recent Democratic event held in Kingwood. Along with several candidates running in the 2007 Houston city council election, the event attracted several judicial office-seekers running in 2008, including Texas Supreme Court Place 8 candidate Judge Susan Criss.

In one of his information-packed open threads on Texas Kaos, lightseeker notes that T Boone Pickens is stacking the deck in Roberts County to suck up water rights.

McBlogger has an update on the toll roads in the Austin area and urges those on CAMPO to think about what they are doing carefully, advising them to not burden taxpayers with the most expensive method of financing road construction.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson wonders if the "conservative" WCGOP and Craddick are going soft. Will they let Rep. Mike Krusee go without a primary challenge from the right, in Will Craddick Let Krusee Go Unpunished?

At Bluedaze, TXsharon tell us about yet Another Republican Sexual Pervert.

Off the Kuff takes a look at the upcoming battle for Harris County DA between incumbent Chuck Rosenthal and former HPD Chief C.O. Bradford.

Bradley Bowen of North Texas Liberal tells us about the excitement at a Hillary Clinton event in DC -- the crowd was moved and motivated.

Could Be True at South Texas Chisme notes that a polluting refiner gets only a teeny, teeny, tiny slap on wrist. Oh, why did they even bother. Just taking the time of a minimum wage clerk to file the darn thing would cost more than the fine does.

Vince at Capitol Annex discusses the race of a "Craddick D" down in HD-40 (Aaron Pena) and offers his opinions on the blogging legislator's chances in a contested primary.

Sunday Funnies (late edition)

Meet Noriega, Jaworski, Criss and others in Clear Lake next week

I'll be in Lake Tahoe and will miss this event. But you should still go:


Update: Melissa Noriega will be standing in for her husband, who'll be out of town at another event.

What do you think Lou Dobbs will be wailing about tomorrow?

Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani said illegal immigration is not a crime, prompting rival Mitt Romney to accuse him of not taking the problem seriously. The two have clashed for weeks over illegal immigration, an issue that inflames GOP conservatives who influence primary elections. The irony is that both candidates have in the past taken more liberal stands on the issue.

"It's not a crime," Giuliani said Friday. "I know that's very hard for people to understand, but it's not a federal crime."

Not just Dobbs of course but all the conservative mouths on Houston's radio, the xenophobes who post at Chron.com (even in the previously-linked story about kolaches), this moron -- in short about 30% of the Republican party's rapidly-eroding base. Because the story broke late Friday they've all had plenty of time for their hatred soup to bubble and fester.

Giuliani has really done it this time. If this doesn't ruin him then I suppose nothing can. But I still don't see the Republicans nominating a Mormon.

No, despite his ties to the Libyan bombers of Pan Am Flight 103, notwithstanding his statement yesterday that al-Qaeda's ban on smoking turned Iraqi public sentiment against them and to the US, I believe it's going to be Frederick of Hollywood.

Sunday Funnies (Working Surge edition)

VX (nerve gas) in Port Arthur

I've blogged previously about the environmental challenges in Southeast Texas, as well as the efforts of local activists (scroll to the end) to push back against the corporations and their lackeys in local government. Two developments in the past few weeks merit updating; first, the soon-to-be-terminated manager of the BP facility in Texas City was shocked to learn how many people had been killed in the plant over the years, and how few people even knew about it. Don Parus, still on BP's payroll at $279K annually, also told the court in the trial of the fifteen BP workers killed in the 2005 explosion at the facility, that a flaring system costing $150,000 was rejected by corporate management as too expensive. Be sure and read the comments at the end.

Secondly, from CLEAN, a waste byproduct of the chemical nerve agent VX is -- without community hearings and in the dead of night -- being transferred to and incinerated in Port Arthur, Texas:

To date, more than 350,000 gallons of VXH have been shipped and incinerated in Port Arthur. Has Veolia Environmental Services, the company receiving at least $49 million from the U.S. Army for incinerated VXH, offered to monitor emissions or conduct soil testing to make sure there is no nerve gas or other toxin being emitted in the process? Has any federal, state or local authority called for this testing? What does a community have to do to get the protection it deserves?

Judge Larry J. McKinney of Indiana's Southern (federal) district court ruled that the shipments from Indiana to Port Arthur should continue despite two rather frightening facts:

1. The neutralization process of VX nerve gas does not destroy all of the VX, some of the nerve gas remains in layers of organic matter. Pure VX nerve gas is in the shipments now traveling across eight states and being incinerated in Port Arthur, Texas.

2. The Army’s method to demonstrate that no nerve gas was present in the VXH was inept and failed to prove the absence of nerve gas in the waste produce as verified in testimony of the Army’s own 3rd party expert and a forensic chemist’s testimony at the hearing.

The TCEQ signed off on both the shipment and the incineration, and though the governors of both Ohio and New Jersey refused to take the shipments, naturally Governor 39% took no action to safeguard the health of Texans. He was busy in California this weekend saying stupid shit like this:

"Since when did the field of science become the sole purview of left-wing politicians?" Perry said. He added, to loud applause and laughter, that he has heard Al Gore talk about global warming so often, "I'm starting to think his mouth may be the lead cause."

I'll let Jane Dale Owen, a Blaffer/Humble Oil heir, ask the closing question:

... where are our elected officials and the governmental agencies whose job it is to protect us when we need them?

Sunday Funnies (if Larry Craig had only gone away quietly...)