So who got Breitbarted the hardest?

Pretty much all of us. (Not that I'm feeling sorry for FOX ...)

Chef Vader (at Comic-Con)

Yes, I'll have a little slice or two of Binks-bacoa, thanks.

See also the Geek Wiki of attendees. Absolutely hilarious. Personally I fall somewhere around Fringer/Social Geek.

The difference between Andrew Breitbart and Lois the Corpse Flower

I was preparing a lengthy post around the unholy alliances connecting Breitbart, Drudge, FOX (particularly Hannity), the conservative contingent of online steerage passengers who sop up every utterance from the preceding like white bread does greasy gravy, the Coalition of the Snookered -- including the NAACP, Tom Vilsack and several others in the Obama administration -- and the remaining corporate media that allows itself to be led by the nose by the conservative media previously cited ....

... but others have smacked them down enough. KO, taking a work break from his vacation for last night's Special Comment, can suffice.



So there's nothing left here to do but some mocking humor.

Answering the query in the header:

One is five feet tall, purple around the edges, coming out in style and smells like carrion.

And the other is Lois the Corpse Flower.

Update: Breitbart and FOX are BFF, just so you know.

Todd Staples' broadband scam breaks out

It's now into the mainstream.

At an unveiling last month, the Texas Department of Agriculture touted its map of broadband Internet availability as the first step in closing a "digital divide" that denies rural Texans critical services.

But a political divide has opened instead, as critics question the tool's accuracy and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples' relationship with the organization that created it.

Staples' Democratic rival, Hank Gilbert, and a handful of local providers, consumer groups and mapping organizations say the agency tailored the application to fit Connected Nation, the nonprofit selected by the department and the Texas Public Utility Commission to create the map. The Agriculture Department and the company defend the process, while their critics contend that the map will direct federal stimulus money toward major telecommunications companies at the expense of smaller Internet providers.

Last month we wrote about this here. I'm going to bring that excerpt forward for its background, because this is a difficult and tightly-woven scandal to understand.

(Hank) Gilbert lately exposed the incumbent for shady dealings regarding broadband internet access for rural Texans. Here's the press release from Connected Nation and Staples.

Connected Nation is well-connected, all right: to Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. The company is first in line to collect federal stimulus dollars -- $4 billion -- earmarked for the massive project of determining where broadband access will go in the hinterlands of America. Staples, on behalf of of the state of Texas, has outsourced a $3 million dollar contract to CN despite serious questions about the company's work in other states, questions about the bidding process (Staples got $60,000 from the Texas Farm Bureau, whose former president is listed as a 'national advisor' of CN), and even questions about CN's business model. Read more about that here, and also at the Wall Street Journal. And when Staples' office started getting media attention about his relationship with CN, the Texas Department of Agriculture directed reporters to the Staples re-election campaign, which then regurgitated their previous negative attacks on Gilbert.

The Chron managed to do a drive-by (on what they consider the race for agriculture commissioner to be: an aggressive tit-for-tat). That sadly reflects the continuing decline in in-depth political coverage there. But The Texas Tribune picked up the item over the weekend, noting the smoking gun: that the Texas Agriculture Commission's first and continuing response was to hand all media inquiries over to the Staples 2010 political branch, which then directed reporters to a specifically-designed smear website against Gilbert. There simply would not be this kind of misdirection and obfuscation if there wasn't something rotten hiding.

Again, Texas progressive blogs have been talking about the entire scope of the issue for the past month; besides Burnt Orange's report in the excerpt above, Texas Kaos has been following the story, and Dos Centavos, and Off the Kuff as well.

And the DMN, who together with their Trail Blazers blog is working harder and faster than any other corporate media outlet in Texas this election cycle, finally gets it.

"It's a scandal, a total scandal," said Art Brodsky, communications director of Public Knowledge, a public interest group that follows digital culture. A longtime critic of Connected Nation, Brodsky has tracked the nonprofit since Kentucky officials accused it of overestimating broadband availability several years ago. The agency that grew into Connection Nation started there in 2001.

Brodsky said nondisclosure agreements make it difficult to see who really benefits from the mapping process.

Forget for a moment the beautiful payola scam that is Connected Nation. It's a story all its own, with similar iterations of incompetence and corruption appearing in every state in which they "operate". Let's just focus on what's going here in Texas.

Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples has used various Republican connections interwoven throughout interest groups like the Texas Farm Bureau and the biggest player/vendors in the telecommunications industry to grant -- with essentially only the slightest semblance of competitive bid -- a multi-million dollar contract, and reap the benefits. Not just politically, but financially for himself as well. And then used the power of incumbency in concert with his political machine not to address public concerns, but to viciously attack his electoral rival when questioned about it. In this respect (minus a few zeroes) he's just aping Rick Perry -- the Trans-Texas Corridor, the late Ric Williamson, and Cintra come immediately to mind, but the more recent example would be Merck, Mike Toomey, and the HPV vaccine -- and the gold standard for corruption of this ilk, Dick Cheney (Halliburton, Iraq).

Don't we have enough of this sleaze to mop up as it is without extending the shelf life of a wannabe like Todd Staples?

Right-wing unleashes frenzy of race-baiting

Far beyond the "Barack Hussein Obama" business, miles past Glenn Beck's feverish rants and Rush Limbaugh's run-of-the-mill slathering, the Conservative Noize Machine is throwing race cards in every direction like a drunken game of 52-pickup.

Last week it was the New Black Panther affair and the Mark Williams "letter to Lincoln".  This week it's the manipulation of videotape by the infamous Andrew Breitbart that implies Shirley Sherrod, formerly of the USDA, made a statement about "white farmers" that was -- using the newest word in the Sarah Palin Dictionary, Constantly Revised -- 'refudiated' by the white farmer family themselves.

Conservatives en masse are taking the white robes and pointy hats out of the closet, twisting up the nooses, and soaking the wooden crosses in kerosene.

Latinos have had to take a back seat to the old-style stoking of racial hatred that still simmers from the '60's. The War on Ill Eagles and the frothing about the Arizona immigration law is still making plenty of headlines, and in the minds of mental midgets like Lamar Smith will keep doing so, but TeaBaggers and Republicans (read: ultra-conservatives and conservatives) lately just feel more comfortable wearing the old bigotry. What's different this time is the subtlety is gone. Gone are the code words, the winks and nods, the dog whistles. Conservative media are openly and aggressively trying to revive old fears and coax them into something menacing. You can chalk it up to bad habit, political desperation, the heat wave or the summer doldrums; the fact is that they're going down a road from which there is no turning back, and it's only going to get worse as summer rolls on.

It's not a presidential election year, but you get the feeling Lee Atwater's Ghost has been reincarnated in CNN's (and RedState.com's) Erick Erickson, who is busy looking for a 2010 version of Willie Horton.

Update: Abby Rapoport at the Texas Observer adds some calmer perspective.

Don't call them racists

Joe Biden says they're not racists, after all. And I trust him. Still, this development was... ah... troubling...

Mark Williams, the tea party leader who wrote a blog post this week calling the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) racist, has been "expelled" from the National Tea Party Federation.


Williams wrote the blog post on Thursday in response to the NAACP's Tuesday declaration accusing the tea party movement of tolerating racist elements in its midst (see The Upshot's rundown on the week of attacks and counterattacks here). It was written as an imaginary letter to President Abraham Lincoln and accused the NAACP of being racist for using the word "colored" in its name. When some reacted to it in outrage, Williams deleted it from his website, declaring it time to "move forward."

The National Tea Party Federation apparently decided to move forward without Williams. Spokesman David Webb said on Face the Nation (Sunday) morning that Williams and his Tea Party Express had been pushed out because Williams' posting was "clearly offensive."

You can read his deleted blog post here. Williams says he's done talking about the matter.

Really though, it's important to distinguish 'being a racist' from 'making racist statements'. Or any other variety of false and offensive public statements. Or even anonymous answering-machine threats of violence. After all, who can see inside another man's heart? Let's review.

Step one: NAACP calls on tea partiers to get their act together and repudiate racist elements within the tea party movement.

Step two: Sarah Palin mocks the NAACP on Twitter for suggesting that "liberty-loving, equality-respecting patriots" are racists.

Step three: Fox gets outraged that NAACP would suggest that there any racists in the tea party to repudiate; links NAACP to made-up New Black Panther Fauxtrage.

Step four: The National Tea Party Federation kicks tea party leader Mark Williams out of the tea party...for racism.

So here's the question: If there weren't any racist leaders in the tea party, then why did the National Tea Party Federation expel Mark Williams? And will the rest of the tea party "movement" join the National Tea Party Federation? And what about Sean Hannity, who like others on Fox had a special affection for Williams?

Everybody who has ever listened to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" understands how tough it is to go from staging a protest to becoming a movement, after all.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance has never lost containment and needs no relief wells as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

Neil at Texas Liberal visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science and took a picture of the corpse flower. The flower will smell like rotten flesh when it blooms. This has been a major topic of conversation in Houston over the past week.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is happy that over 700,000 Texans will now be able to get health insurance despite the negative efforts of John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Bay Area Houston has a lot to discuss, like the Socialist Republican, the Freedom Kissing in the Galveston GOP, and the WARTS of America.

Off the Kuff wrote about a new report on water conservation from the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation.

McBlogger wants to know why Todd Staples is whining about Hank Gilbert being mean? Wasn't Staples the one who personally leveled personal attacks before the primary was over? Turns out Staples can't really give a punch or take one.

Renew Houston's Stephen Costello had a 'come-to-Jesus' with the Harris County Democrats at their Brown Bag Luncheon last week. Open Source Dem was in attendance and filed a report, posted at Brains and Eggs.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is totally irritated by endless political talking heads. Republicans refuse to define the term ENTITLEMENT, because it is what they target to slash. They will only speak in very broad terms. Answer That Question Republicans!

WhosPlayin reports that Lewisville's City Council narrowly overturned the administrative suspension of new gas well permitting, but did go ahead and order staff to review the City's ordinances to see if there is room for improvement.

Sunday Funnies

Rick Perry, Chris Bell, the Governors' Associations, and the big picture

So when the Green Party -- as well as millions of disaffected non-voters across the country -- say, "Both parties do it", this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Let's begin with Harvey Kronberg.

HC: LEARNING FROM REPUBS, DEMS ROUTE CONTROVERSIAL MONEY THROUGH GOVERNORS ASSN

Nugget buried in story from RG Ratcliffe and Joe Holley

From the story:

"White got 71 percent of his money in state and a quarter of it from Washington, D.C., with more than $1 million coming from the Democratic Governors Association.

"A check of IRS filings shows a lot of the Governor's Association money originated in the Houston area, including $400,000 from trial lawyer Steve Mostyn; $125,000 from the firm of Williams, Kherkher, Hart and Bounds; and $75,000 from trial lawyer Walter Umphrey, of Beaumont. Umphrey and Mostyn also donated $25,000 each directly to White's campaign.

"Democrats had complained after the 2006 election that the Republican Governor's Association donated $1 million to Perry's campaign after receiving like donations from Houston homebuilder Bob Perry".

Following up, Harvey once again.

PERRY CAMPAIGN SETTLES WITH CHRIS BELL FOR $426,000

Lawsuit originated over camoflaged campaign contributions routed through Republican Governors Association

A number of news organizations today spotted an interesting irony in the Perry campaign report to the Texas Ethics Commission.

The campaign paid 2006 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell $426,000 to settle a lawsuit over campaign contributions routed through the Republican Governors Association. The money came from Houston home builder Bob Perry and was presumably sent through the RGA to conceal the contributor's identity.

Ironically, as we noted earlier today, the Bill White campaign accepted around a million bucks from the Democratic Governors Association. The DGA money appeared to be largely funded by several prominent trial lawyers.

No word as to whether Perry intends to sue White for mimicking the 2006 Perry campaign tactic.

The Statesman story.

The Dallas Morning News story.

According to the DMN link, the only difference appears to be that ...

Voters didn't know the full extent of the funding arrangement until after the election. ...

Shortly before the November general election four years ago, Bob Perry gave $1 million to the RGA, which delivered the total to Perry in two payments shortly before election day. Democrats complained about the arrangement, saying it happened so late it was hidden from voters.

So as Kronberg points out, the Democrats picked up a clue ... followed suit, and now everything's even.

Really? Really.

Four years ago when I attended the Texas Democratic Party Convention, I received my delegate package in a black canvas bag that had a large, dinner-plate-sized logo of AT&T on the side.  AT&T in fact has been a large contributor to the TDP for a few cycles now; these corporate contributions coming in the allowed-by-law 'administrative expenses' column. This was also about the time that AT&T was beginning to be revealed as allowing the Bush administration to wiretap its customers wholesale without benefit of FISA search warrant. The same warrantless surveillance, incidentally, that the Obama administration has fought to keep.

But I digress; this post is supposed to be about Texas politics. (Oh wait, it still is.)

It really stretches credulity to suggest that the 'Democrats are higher and mightier than Republicans' when the the evidence occasionally -- some would say 'repeatedly' -- contradicts this premise. And I say that as a proud Texas Democratic Party precinct chair, working hard to get more Democrats elected to Austin in the fall.

No, to paraphrase Churchill and democracy, this is the worst political party in the world. Except for all the others. And to the original source to close ...

...it seems to me that there are a number of potential responses: Engage earnestly with the system, sit things out, or, as H.L. Mencken suggests, lean back and chuckle grimly as the farce replays itself over and over again.  

I choose the first option.

Travis County DA investigates Greens ballot bid

The Chron:

The Travis County District Attorney's Office has launched an investigation of the political contributions raised by the Green Party for a ballot petition drive.

In a statement to the cable news service News 8 Austin, the office said its Public Integrity Unit has the matter under review.

And at that link (video there also), John Salazar adds ...

(P)rosecutors with the Travis County District Attorney's Office have launched a preliminary investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing.

"The matter is under review, and investigators and attorneys from the Public Integrity Unit will gather additional information as that review progresses," the district attorney’s office said in a statement.

County officials would not say whether the probe was prompted by an outside complaint, but because Travis County is the seat for state government and home to Texas' political parties, local prosecutors are charged with investigating wrongdoing by state government and political officials.

Not much to divine out of the reports or the official statement.

Rosemary Lehmberg has been in the DA's office since 1976, and the last ten years serving Ronnie Earle as 1st Assistant DA until his retirement in 2008, when she was elected to replace him. BOR had an interview with her as a candidate in that primary. Her highest-profile cases to date have been the Austin Yogurt Shop murders, where the men who confessed to the crime were exonerated -- sort of -- on DNA evidence after the fact, and the capital execution of David Powell last month, where she declined, despite thousands of entreaties, to spare his life.

So while she is a partisan Democrat, she is also a law-and-order hardliner. Let's see where the investigation leads.