Sunday, May 10, 2009

The Irrelephants

I don't think Mike Huckabee is going to be earning Deadeye Dick Cheney's endorsement, either:

Days after national Republicans launched a new campaign to broaden the party's outreach, former upstart presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says the GOP is at risk of becoming "irrelevant as the Whigs."

In an interview with the California newspaper The Visalia Times-Delta, Huckabee said the GOP would only further decline in influence should it alienate social conservatives — largely considered the most energetic and loyal faction of the party.

"Throw the social conservatives the pro-life, pro-family people overboard and the Republican party will be as irrelevant as the Whigs," he said in reference to the American political party that largely disbanded in the mid 1800s.

"They'll basically be a party of gray-haired old men sitting around the country club puffing cigars, sipping brandy and wondering whatever happened to the country. That will be the end of the party," he said in the interview published Thursday.


Then again, who the hell said the evangelicals were getting thrown overboard, anyway? What teabag is Huck steeping?


It's just amazing to me that the voices of the GOP at the moment are literally Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney. And Limbaugh is still pimping Sarah Palin.

Yeah, that's the ticket in 2012. Run with that.

Cantor wins the "Douchie" over Cheney, Steele, and Baucus

Runners-up Michael "Empathize on your behind" Steele and Dick "No need to moderate" Cheney had valiant efforts, but the Douchebag of the Week goes to Eric Cantor.

Democratic Senator Max Baucus submitted a late -- and very nearly winning -- entry, laughing at the protestors in his healthcare reform hearing:



And Cheney made a last-minute, Mine-That-Bird-like charge this morning on Deface the Nation, favoring Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell as the kind of Republican that can best lead the party "forward":



But that's less douchebaggery than it is precisely the kind of strategy that brought the GOP to its present state. And that isn't all bad (for anybody but Republicans, naturally).

Congrats, Congressman Cantor. Cowardice and spinelessness carries you to victory.

Belated Sunday Funnies






Friday, May 08, 2009

RIP, Pontiac. So long, Chrysler.


A little late responding to these developments.

It could crash through burning buildings, make a fool of any number of small-town Southern sheriffs, help save the world from giant robots, even take criminals off to jail while engaging in witty repartee with its driver.

In the end, about the only thing a Pontiac automobile couldn't do anymore was persuade enough people to keep buying it.

So General Motors announced this past week that it is killing off the Pontiac brand, maker of muscular, noisy, gas-guzzling V-8-powered vehicles immortalized in song and movies for the way they seemed to shout to every other car on the block: "Out of the way, pipsqueak!"

When Burt Reynolds needed to outrun Jackie Gleason's bumbling Sheriff Buford T. Justice across the South in the 1977 movie "Smokey and the Bandit," he chose a black Pontiac Trans Am. When he needed a car to crash through burning buildings in "Hooper," it was a red Trans Am.

On TV, the star of the hit 1980s series "Knight Rider" wasn't really David Hasselhoff, it was his talking Pontiac. When Jim Garner's private eye Jim Rockford needed to hit the road to solve a crime, he didn't get behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang or a Chevrolet Camaro. He chose a Pontiac Firebird.

And when a bored high school senior from Nashville, Tenn., decided to tune out his physics teacher's lecture one day and check out a copy of Car and Driver magazine, it was a picture of a hot new Pontiac he saw on the cover. By the end of class, John Wilkin had written the 1964 pop classic "GTO."

Soon after, he would become known as Ronny Wilkin, frontman for a Beach Boys-soundalike group called Ronny and the Daytonas, and he would have the country singing: "Little GTO, you're really lookin' fine. Three deuces and a four-speed and a 389. Listen to her tachin' up now, listen to her whine. Come on and turn it on, wind it up, blow it out GTO."

I never owned one, but they were the shiznet among my late '70's generation of speed racer/stoners. A small handful of classmates got killed or very nearly driving TAs and Firebirds into houses, into other cars. I did own a few Chryslers, though, and all of them were excellent cars. One, a '92 Dodge Dynasty, got me safely through Alicia despite going through water so high that its headlights were submerged. My mom owned a Chrysler Concorde that she proclaimed was still her favorite even when she was driving a Lexus.

After months of struggling to stay alive on government loans, Chrysler finally succumbed to bankruptcy (April 30), pinning its future on a top-to-bottom reorganization and plans to build cleaner cars through an alliance with Italian automaker Fiat.

The nation's third-largest car manufacturer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York after a group of creditors defied government pressure to wipe out Chrysler's debt. The company plans to emerge in as little as 30 days as a leaner, more nimble company, probably with Fiat as the majority owner. In return, the federal government agreed to give Chrysler up to $8 billion in additional aid and to back its warranties.

"It's a partnership that will give Chrysler a chance not only to survive, but to thrive in a global auto industry," President Barack Obama said from the White House.

Chrysler said it will close all its plants starting Monday and they will stay closed until the company comes out of bankruptcy. At least three Detroit-area factories sent workers home Thursday after suppliers stopped shipping parts over fears they would not be paid.

The UAW members employed by the company will own 55% of a reborn Chrysler, the US government has an 8 percent stake, Canada 2%, and Fiat the rest. Recall, as the article notes, that BK was crammed down the automaker's throat because of the recalcitrance of a few hedge fund managers that refused to restructure Chrysler's debt:

Four of the largest banks holding 70 percent of Chrysler's debt agreed (last) week to a deal that would give them $2 billion. But a collection of hedge funds refused to budge, saying the deal was unfair and would only return a small fraction of their holdings.

When the hedge funds refused a sweetened offer (April 29), Chrysler and the government resorted to bankruptcy.

Obama chastised the funds for seeking an "unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout."

One lender, OppenheimerFunds Inc., said it rejected the government offer because it "unfairly asked our fund shareholders to make financial sacrifices greater than the sacrifices being made by unsecured creditors."

Later (April 30), one of the hedge funds that had been a holdout issued a statement agreeing to the offer.

"We believe that this is in the best interests of all Chrysler stakeholders, and our own investors and partners," said the statement from Perella Weinberg Partners. The fund said it was working "to encourage broad participation in the settlement."

That wasn't enough however so the company went into receivership. Some call it socialism, of course.

The Auburn Hills, Mich.-based company lost $8 billion last year and its sales through March were down 46 percent compared with the same period last year, leading some auto industry analysts to question whether Chrysler can survive even in bankruptcy.

But company executives told reporters Thursday that Chrysler vehicles with Fiat's fuel-efficient technology should reach showrooms in 18 months.

Vice Chairman Jim Press said Chrysler has cut expenses to operate profitably at a lower sales volume, and he said it would be able to take advantage of Fiat's distribution network to sell more vehicles globally.

Also, the company has new products coming out such as the new Jeep Grand Cherokee, which debuts in early 2011.

Press said the company predicts that small-car sales will rise dramatically around the time the Fiat products hit the U.S. market.

"The real volume pickup opportunity for smaller cars is going to start to ramp up about two years from now," he said.

I really hope Chrysler makes it, and not because of any political told-you-sos, but because the American economy has very few options -- all of them bitter -- if it doesn't.

David Simon on the future of newspapers

It's bleak, unless someone comes up with an economic model breakthrough, and fast.

Simon, creator of "Homicide" and "The Wire" on HBO, was also once a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. In his testimony to a Senate hearing chaired by John Kerry last Wednesday, he skewered corporate newspaper executives for their greed and hubris as well as those of us in the so-called New Media for our cheekiness and scavenger-like use of the work done by the gumshoes. He also dismisses the idea of a non-profit status for newspapers, one I thought had some merit.

Read the entire thing, but here's a snip:

My name is David Simon, and I used to be a newspaperman in Baltimore. What I say will likely conflict with what representatives of the newspaper industry will claim, and I can imagine little agreement with those who speak for new media. From the captains of the newspaper industry, you may hear a certain "martyrology", a claim that they were heroically serving democracy, only to be undone by a cataclysmic shift in technology. From those speaking on behalf of new media, weblogs and that which goes “twitter,” you will be treated to assurances that American journalism has a perfectly fine future online and that a great democratization is taking place. Well, a plague on both their houses.

High-end journalism is dying in America. And unless a new economic model is achieved, it will not be reborn on the web or anywhere else. The internet is a marvelous tool, and clearly it is the information delivery system of our future. But thus far, it does not deliver much first-generation reporting. Instead, it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications, whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth. Meanwhile, readers acquire news from aggregators and abandon its point of origin, namely the newspapers themselves. In short, the parasite is slowly killing the host.

It’s nice to get stuff for free, of course, and it’s nice that more people can have their say in new media. And while some of our internet community is rampantly ideological, ridiculously inaccurate and occasionally juvenile, some of it’s also quite good, even original. Understand, I’m not making a Luddite argument against the internet and all that it offers. But you do not, in my city, run into bloggers or so-called citizen journalists at City Hall or in the courthouse hallways or at the bars where police officers gather. You don’t see them consistently nurturing and then pressing others—pressing sources. You don’t see them holding institutions accountable on a daily basis.

Why? Because high-end journalism is a profession. It requires daily full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out. Reporting was the hardest and, in some ways, most gratifying job I ever had. I’m offended to think that anyone anywhere believes American monoliths, as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives, can be held to gathered facts by amateurs presenting the task—pursuing the task without compensation, training or, for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care who it is they’re lying to or who they’re withholding information from.

Indeed, the very phrase “citizen journalist” strikes my ear as Orwellian. A neighbor who is a good listener and cares about people is a good neighbor; he is not in any sense a citizen social worker, just as a neighbor with a garden hose and good intentions is not a citizen firefighter. To say so is a heedless insult to trained social workers and firefighters.

Much more, all of it cogent, here.

Update: The Salon of Somervell County has a rejoinder to Simon in the comments. (I promise to work on commenting here much easier very soon.)

Jane Ely 1940 - 2009

Longtime newspaper reporter Jane Ely, a steely-eyed, salty-tongued political insider whose telephone calls could make elected office holders tremble, died Monday of lung-related illness. She was 69.

Ely, the younger daughter of Fort Worth banker and cattle broker William Ely, began her Houston journalism career in the mid-1960s as a police reporter for the Houston Post. She remained with that publication, working as a political writer and assistant city editor, until joining the Houston Chronicle in 1988.

At the Chronicle, Ely first covered national politics, then joined the editorial page staff as a columnist. She retired in August 2004.

"She was sharp as a tack, hard as nails and as subtle as a ball peen hammer," said former Chronicle editorial page editor Frank Michel. "She was just what you want in somebody like that."


I met Ms. Ely only briefly, and only recently -- on election night last November, at Beverly Kaufman's office to observe the election returns. She was quite gregarious although barely ambulatory. I would love to have heard some of her stories. Here's more from a few who did ...

Margaret Downing:


By the time I joined the Post in 1980, Ely was legendary not only for her political writing that brought her into regular contact with politicians and officials at all the levels of power, but for her ability to tell a story to a listening audience, either around a city desk, or at a bar after work. ...

(Harris County tax assessor/collector's office employee Fred) King remembers one of her best ones, from a few years spent sitting next to her at the Post.

"Jane, a candidate and a pilot were in a small plane hopping around the state to campaign stops. Always late, of course, the politician wanted to get to some spot despite the weather.

"The weather started tossing them around. The politician was either in the back seat or too sick to help or both. Jane got some clothing from a suitcase and kept the windshield clean enough for the pilot to see. The INSIDE of the windshield. The pilot was sick and hurling on the windshield."

As King puts it: "Then and always, Jane was fearless."

Democratic activist Carl Whitmarsh, as shared with his e-mail list:

I think one of my great memories of Jane was back during the general election of 1978 when John Hill and Bill Clements were running against each other for Governor. I was ED of the County Party and the Hill headquarters were next door to us at 2016 Main. That year was absolutely wild for any number of reasons, but this one morning I look up from my desk and here comes John Hill followed by the press contingent which included Jane. Clements had just thrown a rubber chicken down on a banquet table at Hill and everyone was aghast. She stopped by and grabbed a piece of candy -- just long enough for me to make some sort of wise crack about this sealing the election for Hill. Jane stood straight up and looked down on me thru her blackhorned rim glasses and said "Toots, I wouldn't count on that. I think the folk are buying what Clements is selling". I thought I would fall over since everybody and their dog still thought Hill was a cinch and we hadn't elected a Republican Governor since reconstruction. On election night, Jane proved to be one of the few who picked right as we all know the results. The morning after when you lose is not a pretty sight, but here the press and State Party Chair Billy Goldberg come thru the office on their way to a post election news conference in the Press Club and Jane just stood there and said ...You'll learn to listen to the old girl.

And GLBT activist Ray King (also from Whitmarsh's listserv):

...and do not forget that it was Jane Ely whose column (titled: "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?") in The Houston Post gave us advanced warning that Anita Bryant was appearing at the Texas Bar Association Banquet. That gave us enough time to organize the event that changed our lives more than any other. When I described what happened here the next day to Harvey Milk, he wanted to bring her to San Fransisco. It is in the movie.

Zippity Doo Da also has a take.

The final edition has been put to bed, Ms. Ely. They're waiting for you at the bar, with a full shot glass at your place.

Here's to you.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Eric Cantor: pathetic "Douchebag"

Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, who apparently falsely claimed he was one of the finalists to be John McCain's running mate last summer, added to his embarrassment this week by being publicly rebuked by the leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh.

Following the inaugural convention of the National Council for a New America -- which consisted of Cantor, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and fifteen other good GOP folks at a pizza pub in suburban D.C. -- Cantor commented that the Republicans would embark on a series of town halls across the nation in order to begin "listening to the American people". But Limbaugh said on his radio show shortly after that "a listening tour wasn't needed", so Cantor then promptly said it "wasn't a listening tour." Watch it:



By virtue of these two sad attempts to show himsef as a GOP leader -- only to be shown that he isn't -- Cantor emerges as a "Douchbag of the Week" finalist.

Monday, May 04, 2009

The Weekly Wrangle

It's Monday -- time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's weekly blog roundup.

How would Republicans handle a pandemic? CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows. They'd hunker down. Get out their guns and shoot anybody with a runny nose.

After a record 3 weeks without a post in his six years of blogging, Easter Lemming has a very brief round-up of the Pasadena elections.

Off the Kuff writes about the resolution to impeach Judge Sharon Keller as submitted by Rep. Lon Burnam, which received a committee hearing last week.

Vince at Capitol Annex tells the sad story of how a fundamentalist "historian" and evangelist who believes that hurricanes are God's punishment on society for tolerating gay citizens will guide the writing of Texas' new social studies standards. If you thought Darwin versus Don McLeroy was a train wreck, wait until it is the treatment of American Indians, what labor unions have done for America, Islam, women's suffrage, 9/11, the free enterprise system, and the civil rights movement versus David Barton. First one who catches one of the new "experts" complaining about too much information about minorities in textbooks wins a prize!

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posted this week on the latest transportation funding scheme the Lege came up with ... a "transportation bank": Texas Transportation Revolving Fund?.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote a helluva post about the inability of the Republican Party to return to its pre-1929 stock crash numbers in the U.S. Senate. He also wrote about the albino buffalo in Kenya. Texas Liberal passed 600,000 total page views this week and is averaging 1570 a day for 2009. Thanks blog reading public!

Why on Earth is the Texas Senate, working with TXDOT, trying to turn the public pensions trusts into another AIG? McBlogger would really like an answer.

Arlen Specter's political deathbed conversion didn't strike PDiddie at Brains and Eggs as something wonderful. And Burka's conflating Kay Bailey into the conversation was greeted with even more derision.

BossKitty at TruthHugger wonders about those poor souls on death row who depend on the passion of protesters and technology for hope. Whether they know they are guilty or innocent, at least they know they'll get the needle instead of the chair or the noose. Those death row inmates now have the best chance ever, and with revelations about bias and legal system misconduct front and center, death penalty question marks are getting bolder. Take a look at Killer Texas Laws and Lawmakers Continue To Amaze with many historic reference links to click.

Over at TexasKaos, Boadicea says no to Fake Reform. See what she has to say in her posting: "Transparency"-I Don't Think That Word Means What You Think It Means...

After much talk about secession, Gov. Perry has found yet another reason to keep the federal government around. The Texas Blue notes that the guy who wanted American troops to defend the border and asked for money -- and then more money -- to help the Hurricane Ike cleanup shortly before talking about leaving the Union now wants the Centers for Disease Control to give us 37,000 doses of Tamiflu to help with the swine flu virus.

WhosPlayin is neck-deep in the local (Lewisville) mayor's race, and examined candidate Winston Edmondson's wacky ideas to increase police morale by giving them more patches, and finding corporate sponsors.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Foxx over Bachmann for "Douchebag of the Week"


Pure ignorance defeats contrived ignorance in this week's "Douchebag" face-off.

Rep Virginia Foxx (left) of North Carolina and her claim that the death of Matthew Shepherd was a 'hoax' overpowered Rep. Michele Bachmann's (right) outlandish and false observation that swine flu only occurs under Democratic administrations.

Unlike the stupidity demonstrated by Reps. Culberson and Barton last week, this one wasn't even close.

Congratulations, Virginia. There is no Santa Claus.

Extra Sunday Funnies






Jack Kemp 1935 - 2009


In this July 3, 1967 picture, California Gov. Ronald Reagan and his special assistant Jack Kemp discuss football in his office in Sacramento, CA. Kemp, who had been working as member of the governor's staff since February, will leave California the following week to begin training for his 11th year in pro football.

Kemp was secretary of housing and urban development under the first President George Bush and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1996. But his greatest legacy may stem from his years as a congressman from Buffalo, especially 1978, when his argument for sharp tax cuts to promote economic growth became party policy, one that has endured to this day.

Mr. Kemp, having embraced a supply-side economic theory, told the House that year that the nation suffered under a “tax code that rewards consumption, leisure, debt and borrowing, and punishes savings, investment, work and production.”

Ronald Reagan adopted the issue as a central one in his 1980 presidential campaign, and in 1981 he won passage of a 23 percent cut over three years. The legislation was known as Kemp-Roth, named for Mr. Kemp and William V. Roth Jr., the Delaware Republican and his Senate co-sponsor.

Mr. Kemp’s other great cause, in his 18 years in the House and for three decades thereafter, was to get his party to seek more support from blacks and other minorities.

“The party of Lincoln,” he wrote after the 2008 election, “needs to rethink and revisit its historic roots as a party of emancipation, liberation, civil rights and equality of opportunity for all.”

Mr. Kemp won his House seat in 1970 because of his celebrity as an all-star quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, twice champions of the American Football League. He connected his concern for minorities with his respect for his black teammates, especially the linemen who had protected him from pass rushers.

Vin Weber, a former congressman from Minnesota and a close friend, said Mr. Kemp would often say, “I can’t help but care about the rights of the people I used to shower with.”

Kemp was a good and decent man; certainly as decent a Republican as they came during his time in politics. However misguided his tax policy has turned out to be, he was a fine HUD secretary -- better than some Democrats.

In a letter to his grandchildren following the 2008 election, he wrote:

(A) little over 40 years ago, blacks in America had trouble even voting in our country, much less thinking about running for the highest office in the land.

A little over 40 years ago, in some parts of America, blacks couldn’t eat, sleep or even get a drink of water using facilities available to everyone else in the public sphere.

We are celebrating, this year, the 40th anniversary of our Fair Housing Laws, which helped put an end to the blatant racism and prejudice against blacks in rental housing and homeownership opportunities.

As an old professional football quarterback, in my days there were no black coaches, no black quarterbacks, and certainly no blacks in the front offices of football and other professional sports. For the record, there were great black quarterbacks and coaches — they just weren’t given the opportunity to showcase their talent. And pro-football (and America) was the worse off for it.

I remember quarterbacking the old San Diego Chargers and playing for the AFL championship in Houston. My father sat on the 50-yard line, while my co-captain’s father, who happened to be black, had to sit in a small, roped-off section of the end zone. Today, we can’t imagine the NFL without the amazing contributions of blacks at every level of this great enterprise. ...

When President-elect Obama quoted Abraham Lincoln on the night of his election, he was acknowledging the transcendent qualities of vision and leadership that are always present, but often overlooked and neglected by pettiness, partisanship and petulance. As president, I believe Barack Obama can help lift us out of a narrow view of America into the ultimate vision of an America where, if you’re born to be a mezzo-soprano or a master carpenter, nothing stands in your way of realizing your God-given potential.

Both Obama in his Chicago speech, and McCain in his marvelous concession speech, rose to this historic occasion by celebrating the things that unite us irrespective of our political party, our race or our socio-economic background.

My advice for you all is to understand that unity for our nation doesn’t require uniformity or unanimity; it does require putting the good of our people ahead of what’s good for mere political or personal advantage.

The party of Lincoln, (i.e., the GOP), needs to rethink and revisit its historic roots as a party of emancipation, liberation, civil rights and equality of opportunity for all. ...

Let me end with an equally great historical irony of this election. Next year, as Obama is sworn in as our 44th president, we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. I’m serving, along with former Rep. Bill Gray of Pennsylvania, on the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Board to help raise funds for this historic occasion. President-elect Obama’s honoring of Lincoln in many of his speeches reminds us of how vital it is to elevate these ideas and ideals to our nation’s consciousness and inculcate his principles at a time of such great challenges and even greater opportunities.

President-elect Obama talks of Abraham Lincoln’s view of our nation as an “unfinished work.” Well, isn’t that equally true of all of us? Therefore let all of us strive to help him be a successful president, so as to help make America an even greater nation.

50-1

Trainer Bennie Woolley Jr. hitched Mine That Bird to the back of his pickup and drove to the Kentucky Derby from New Mexico. With an inspired ride on the rail from Calvin Borel, it all added up to one of the greatest upsets in 135 years of America’s most famous horse race.

“Those cowboys,” trainer Bob Baffert said, “they came with a good horse.”

Mine That Bird went off at 50-1 odds Saturday, but that was only one measure of how little attention he garnered before pulling away in the stretch to score a 6 3/4 -length victory at Churchill Downs, the second-biggest stunner in Derby history. The margin was the largest since Assault won by eight lengths in 1946.

“All I asked him was to lay the horse back and be patient, and he did that magically,” Woolley said.

That should have been no surprise since Borel used the same rail-hugging ride to win the Derby two years ago with Street Sense.

“I learned by Street Sense being so patient with these 3-year-olds,” Borel said. “They can only go so fast, so far. When I hollered at him, he just went on.”


Borel couldn't get a decent ride at Churchill Downs even after that magical 2007 win. Bet that never happens again.


Mine That Bird ran 1 mile on a sloppy track in 2:02.66 and paid $103.20, $54 and $25.80. It was the second-largest payout in Derby history behind Donerail ($184.90) in 1913.

The 45-year-old Woolley, a former quarterhorse trainer who spent time on the rodeo circuit as a bareback rider, hobbled on crutches to the winner’s circle. He broke his right leg in a motorcycle accident two months ago.

“I’m feeling like I never have before,” he said. “I was just blown away.”


And the horse couldn't win regularly at Sunland Park (near El Paso), but did earn enough graded stakes money to qualify for the Run for the Roses. Though the owners didn't know that until the Derby called and asked them if they were coming.

Mine That Bird got squeezed coming out of the starting gate, but Borel took a firm hold and wrestled the horse to the rail while they were in last place.

They were 12th and going strong with a quarter mile to go, after working their way around Atomic Rain. Borel quickly angled Mine That Bird back to the inside with three-sixteenths to go and shot the gelding through a tight spot approaching the eighth pole.

“I had enough room,” Borel said. “He’s a small horse.”

Once free, Mine That Bird quickly accelerated toward an improbable victory.

“I salute Calvin for his terrific ride,” said trainer Todd Pletcher, whose Derby losing streak extended to 0-of-24. “It’s an amazing story. It just shows you how special this race is. Anything can happen.”

Borel’s mind was on his parents during the race and he paid them tribute by crossing the finish line with his whip pointing to the overcast sky.

“If they could only be here to see what I accomplish in my life,” he said, his voice choking.