Bell for Senate's grand opening, yesterday

The Weekly Wrangle

This week's Texas Progressive Alliance Blog Round-Up includes no submissions from blog publishers who attended last weekend's Netroots Nation convention in Austin (we're saving those for a different Round-Up). There is one from someone who did not attend, however ...

The Texas Cloverleaf asks if John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison want more HIV in the global pandemic? Our Senators were 2 of the 16 votes against the latest HIV/AIDS bill in the Senate that passed overwhelmingly.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on Diana Maldonado's great fundraising numbers in Maldonado Has Almost 4 to 1 COH Advantage In HD-52.

WhosPlayin stepped outside of his comfort zone a bit and commented on the Fannie and Freddie situation.

jobsanger blasts Republican attempts to allow offshore and ANWR drilling in Drilling Won't Make Us Energy Independent and in Bush Playing Politics With Oil.

The bar may be open, says TXSharon at Texas Kaos in Fire Water: With Compliments from EnCana, but if Encana's serving up the cocktails, it might be better to abstain.

McBlogger's own Harry Balczak has a new recurring feature, Harry Balczak's Reminder To You People. In this edition, he'd like to remind Those Of You Who Just Couldn't Vote For Kerry that your decision was, well, pretty stupid. He is nice about it, though.

Vince at Capitol Annex notes that poultry kingpin Bo Pilgrim paid to jet around Texas Governor Rick Perry's staff to promote the ethanol waver he bought and paid for with a $100,000 contribution to the Republican Governor's Association.

Mean Rachel contemplates whether Fannie and Freddie have anything to do with being raised in 78704, but living through young-adulthood in 78749 in Crashes.

The final word, for now, on the Webb County sheriff's race says Martin Cuellar wins by 41 votes. Since the various 'official' totals for Cuellar have been +37, -133, +39 and finally +41, CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders what the h*ll happened!

Off the Kuff looks at the Harris County campaign finance reports and finds good news and not-so-good news for Democratic campaigns.

The Texas Observer's Melissa Del Bosque had an observation about one of the panels at Netroots Nation this past weekend, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had some observations about what she observed.

BossKitty at BlueBloggin shows us smuggling humans into the US is no problem at all; From Africa to Mexico to US, Any Way They Can Immigrate.

BossKitty at TruthHugger points out the continued struggle by our soldiers suffering from PTSD and the inadequate response by the incapable VA, in But, When They Come Home ….

Even more Funnies (Last jeers from the Grammstand, etc.)

Rich: "It's the Economic Stupidity, Stupid"

A classic evisceration of John McCain's incompetence on the economy by the NYT's Frank Rich. Some of the hilarity ensuing:

In 2000, he told an interviewer that he would make up for his lack of attention to “those issues.” As he entered the 2008 campaign, Mr. McCain was still saying the same, vowing to read “Greenspan’s book” as a tutorial. Last weekend, the resolutely analog candidate told The New York Times he is at last starting to learn how “to get online myself.” Perhaps he’ll retire his abacus by Election Day.

Picking myself off the floor from laughing after that one.

McCain’s fiscal ineptitude has received so little scrutiny in some press quarters that his chief economic adviser, the former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, got a free pass until the moment he self-immolated on video by whining about “a nation of whiners.” The McCain-Gramm bond, dating back 15 years, is more scandalous than Obama’s connection with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. McCain has been so dependent on Gramm for economic policy that he sent him to newspaper editorial board meetings, no doubt to correct the candidate’s numbers much as Joe Lieberman cleans up after his confusions of Sunni and Shia.

Just two weeks before publicly sharing his thoughts about America’s “mental recession,” Mr. Gramm laid out equally incendiary views in a Wall Street Journal profile that portrayed him as “almost certainly” the McCain choice for Treasury secretary. Mr. Gramm said that the former chief executive of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, was “probably the most exploited worker in American history” since he received only a $158 million pay package rather than the “billions” he deserved for his success in growing Southwestern Bell.

Coming on this news about the compensation packages of Houston's titans of the oil industry -- along with the free-market apologists in the comments -- this data about Gramm's employer, UBS, has even greater impact ...

But no one in the news media seemed to notice Gramm’s naked expression of the mindset he’d bring to a McCain White House. And few journalists have vetted the presumptive Treasury secretary’s post-Senate history as an executive at UBS. The stock of that banking giant has lost 70 percent of its value in a year after its reckless adventures in the subprime lending market. It’s now fending off federal investigation for helping the mega-rich avoid taxes.

McCain made a big show of banishing Gramm after his whining “gaffe,” but it’s surely at most a temporary suspension. When the candidate said back in January that there’s nobody he knows who is stronger on economic issues than his old Senate pal, he was telling the truth. Left to his own devices — or those of his new No. 1 economic surrogate, Carly Fiorina — McCain is clueless.

And then Rich zeroes in on McCain's, ah, changes of mind:

The term flip-flopping doesn’t do justice to Mr. McCain’s self-contradictory economic pronouncements because that implies there’s some rational, if hypocritical, logic at work. What he serves up instead is plain old incoherence, as if he were compulsively consulting one of those old Magic 8 Balls. In a single 24-hour period in April, Mr. McCain went from saying there’s been “great economic progress” during the Bush presidency to saying “Americans are not better off than they were eight years ago.” He reversed his initial condemnation of mortgage bailouts in just two weeks.

In February Mr. McCain said he would balance the federal budget by the end of his first term even while extending the gargantuan Bush tax cuts. In April he said he’d accomplish this by the end of his second term. In July he’s again saying he’ll do it in his first term. Why not just say he’ll do it on Inauguration Day? It really doesn’t matter since he’s never supplied real numbers that would give this promise even a patina of credibility.

Mr. McCain’s plan for Social Security reform is “along the lines that President Bush proposed.” Or so he said in March. He came out against such “privatization” in June (though his policy descriptions still support it). Last week he indicated he isn’t completely clear on what Social Security does. He called the program’s premise — young taxpayers foot the bill for their elders (including him) — an “absolute disgrace.”

Rich goes on to savage Carly Fiorina, the backup financial adviser as well as Mitt Romney, presumptive vice-presidential selection, as similarly economic-justice-challenged. But then he quite oddly advances former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg as the ultimate in Maverick picks for running mate.

Yeah, that ought to go over swimmingly with both Bloomberg -- himself heavily rumored earlier this year for the job McCain wants -- and the GOP base of obstructionists of reproductive choice and gay rights.

More Funnies

Not quite 300.

I know I promised reality last week, but states that are, in the aggregate, only one percentage point apart really belong in the undecided (grey) category. Thus the only changes from last Sunday are NV (blue) and AK (red). It's still out of reach for McCain and because the upper Midwest Ohio River Valley is where the contest will turn for him, expect him to pick someone like Mitt Romney (MI, kinda) or Rob Portman (OH) as his V-P. They both answer most of the doubts (McCain's age, conservative enough to satisfy the mad-dog GOP base) without raising any concerns (Crist being gay).

The only thing ultimately that his running mate will be is the Republican favorite for 2012.

<p><strong>><a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/'>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>

The Texas Observer observes something at NN

I have grieved over the loss of progressivism at the Texas Observer -- my friend Juanita's writing there notwithstanding -- but Melissa Del Bosque, who attended the blogconfab wrapping up in Austin today has a report worth repeating. I'll emphasis the cogent parts:

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based legal advocacy organization hosted a panel Saturday afternoon on Guantanamo and Habeas Corpus and what the president can do in the first 100 days of his term to restore the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

As Americans we are hooked on the idea that any problem can be solved with 10 simple solutions or in some given number of days. Yesterday, former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke plugged his 12 solutions for our national security crisis at his panel.

The consensus on today’s panel, however, from the lawyers and journalists present was that it would take more than one hell of a push broom and 100 days to clean up George Jr.’s mess. The picture was bleak: our Constitution is in tatters and the Supreme Court and Congress have descended into an Alice in Wonderland world where right is wrong and up is down.

Admittedly, it was depressing. Still it was energizing to see a large room nearly filled with extremely concerned and pissed off citizens. At one point, an attendee stood up and asked what bloggers and activists could do to turn the sinking ship around.

Panelist Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (yes his book was plugged at the panel) encouraged attendees to spend less time behind the computer and more time in the streets protesting.

Scahill saved his most scathing remarks for Democrats in Congress, including Barack Obama, commenting that instead of defining themselves as a real opposition party they had undermined efforts to hold Bush’s administration accountable. “Bush is operating in an enforcement-free zone inside the United States and outside the United States,” he said.

Scahill warned that the U.S. was in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in history with a record number of private contractors carrying out government duties around the world. To illustrate this, he reminded the audience that Blackwater and Dyncorp were at the moment guarding Senator Obama as he toured Afghanistan and Iraq.

ACLU Lawyer and panelist Jameel Jaffar, told the audience that it was wrong and dangerous to blame Bush for everything. He cited the Supreme Court and Congress as miserable failures when it came to defending our Democracy and the Constitution.

“Ultimately, it will take more than a change in Administration to effect the change we want,” he said. “The most important thing in the first 100 days is to set up a truth and accountability mechanism like the 9-11 Commission,” he suggested.

The take home message was that American citizens need to keep a close eye on their government — now more than ever — and hold political leaders accountable. This includes Barack Obama, no matter how badly Democrats want to see him in the White House.

Scahill exhorted the crowd — many of them not surprisingly Obama supporters — to cheat on their love affair with Barack Obama with a little bit of conscience.

“John McCain and a head of lettuce could get the same number of votes,” he said, drawing laughs from the crowd. “Now is when you really need to hold Obama’s feet to the fire, because he needs your votes and he needs your money — he won’t need them after November.”

Forget that "Blackwater guarding Obama" part for the moment. As George W Bush helpfully reminded us almost four years ago, there comes an accountability moment, one time and one time only, in each presidential cycle. It's called Election Day.

The guy who appoints Supreme Court Justices for life gets a four-year contract with no corporate board oversight (at least not when Democrats are in charge). Probably the least we ought to do, as shareholders and all, is point out his mistakes to him when he makes them. Especially since he hasn't quite earned the promotion yet.

You've had that experience if you've worked for any corporation: you've worked hard, spent long hours at the office, paid your dues, kissed the right asses, there's a slot open -- or about to open; that dumbshit is going to get fired soon enough-- but the boss makes you keep toiling away for months or even years waiting for the promotion.

Just to make sure you don't fuck it up after he promotes you. Like the last guy. You know what I'm talking about (and it ain't Dubya).

If we don't hold Obama accountable for our convictions now, do you really think Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are going to after January next year?

Honestly, this is how the Democrats could screw the pooch in 2010, or 2012 at the latest. Do you actually believe that Obama and and a veto-proof Congress are going to turn on a dime in six months and stop the wars? They're going to bring our soldiers home from Iraq, negotiate a peace with Iran, have the good fortune to be on watch when we capture Osama, free the wrongly imprisoned in Guantanemo and force Karl Rove to testify?

Then lower gasoline prices and create millions of new jobs and fix the financial markets and all else that's wrong with our economy? And the climate?

And thereby win the love of a grateful and still mostly conservative nation?

That's a big to-do list. Shit needs to be fixed, cleaned up, some bad practices need to be ceased (torture and warrantless spying on Americans and holding corporations accountable and blahblahblah). I just don't think they can get it all done. I don't think they even want to try to fix or clean up some of it. Call me crazy.

I don't know, maybe we all should just go back to watching Dancing With the Stars. Sorry I bothered ya.

Sunday Funnies (that magazine cover edition)

Another sign

A friend in Jefferson County sends this:

"A taxpayer voting Barack Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."

A number of drivers on Twin City Highway Thursday might have seen this message on the sign in front of Bob Costilow Realtors. And at least one was offended.

"They put themselves in a crossfire," said Jevyn McDowell, who passed the sign on the way to her job. "We had our primary elections and Obama came out on top. I'm an African-American, and it looks like (Bob Costilow Realtors) is comparing black folks to chickens."

Bob Costilow, company owner, said that was not what the sign meant.

"I don't agree with what Obama proposes for taxes," Costilow said. "No more. No less."

Costilow said one of the main things he finds appalling about Obama's tax plan is his stance on the capital gains tax.

"When you sell your house, under current tax laws, you do not have to pay any capital gains tax," he said. "My view is that I don't want any more taxes."

...

"I saw it in an e-mail on a sign put up by a State Farm agent in Mandeville, La.," he said. "I loved it. I have gotten some calls about it, and some of them were even congratulatory in nature."

But McDowell said she feels that Costilow was intending to be offensive to the black community.

"To me, that is more offensive than that magazine cover," she said, referring to a recent issue of The New Yorker that had a drawing of Obama on the cover in a turban with an American flag burning in the fireplace, among other things. "People at any company should not be openly offensive when it comes to politics, religion or sexual preference. As a consumer, if I was needing to buy or sell a home, I would certainly not go to that realty company."

Costilow said that he is not out to offend anyone, but if they get offended, he doesn't care.

"I don't give a damn," he said. "We have free speech in this country, and if it fluffs somebody's feathers, I'm sorry. I don't agree with Obama's tax plan."

I don't know Mr. Costilow, but I know someone who does and reports that he is as big a jerk as you would gather just from reading this article.

Hope business is booming for you over there, Bob.

A sign

You can make your own here.

An interview with Gen. Time Horizon

Q.: General, recently you changed your name from "Artificial Timetable" (or Timetable for short, or Art for real short) to "Time Horizon". What gives?

G.T.H.: Well, the surge is workin', it don't look like we're goan hafta fight 'em over here instead of over there, here meanin' home, the good ol' US of A that is, and we dam shore ain't goan cut n' run.

Q.: What does that have to do with you suddenly changing your name, General?

G.T.H.: Well it don't got nuthin' ta do with that liberal socialist Hussein Obama, that's fer shore too.

Q. Mr. Obama is supposed to meet with you in Baghdad sometime this weekend, according to John McCain yesterday. Most American officials have visited Iraq without public announcement in order to avoid alerting terrorists to their arrival. Why did McCain announce his political rival's trip ahead of time to the media?

G.T.H.: Well hell, he wants to win the election. This is war and we can't let the terrists win.

Q. Obama has been in favor of a timetable for withdrawal all along. Hasn't the Bush administration, under pressure as well from Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki, simply decided to face reality?

G.T.H.: What reality you talkin' 'bout, Willis? This is an asspirational goal, to draw down troop strength in Iraq so we can send 'em to Afghanistan to get killed and maimed. And we're also goan need fresh meat for the coming battle with Iran.

Uh, forget I said that last part.

NYT Op-ed: Israel will attack Iran

Sometime between November and January -- which presumably means with George Bush's approval and the assistance of United States military forces. So overlook, for a moment, the horror of handing off another war to President Obama, this one could very likely go nuclear:

Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.

Gee. What do you suppose that will do to gasoline prices?