The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance salutes the changing of the guard in Lone Star professional football prowess -- watching the Houston Texans vanquish their nemesis, the Indianapolis Colts, as the Dallas Cowboys folded like a cheap card table against their longtime rival, the Washington D.C. Native Americans -- as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

Off the Kuff concluded his legislative interviews with state representatives Carol Alvarado and Ana Hernandez, and candidates Kendra Yarbrough Camarena and Brad Neal.

Bay Area Houston believes Rick Perry is the insurance industry's bitch.

John Cornyn, best known as a rapist enabler, is busy throwing cold water on the GOP's Senate takeover chances. Just the other day, Cornyn pooh-poohed on Lisa Murkowski's race. South Texas Chisme thinks Cornyn is just a cold, cold guy.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson reminds us that in this election season, the Republican candidates don't want to talk about the most serious issues and we can't let them run and hide from the ones that matter the most.

The GOP would rather climb a tree to tell a lie than stand on the ground and speak the truth. Leo Vasquez and King Street Patriots: PDiddie at Brains and Eggs is looking at YOU.

Justin at Asian American Action Fund Blog points out that Houston Chronicle reporter Chris Moran is a racist for questioning Harris County Judge candidate Gordon Quan's lifelong residence in Harris County.

McBlogger takes a look at the debate over a Debate and concludes that it's time to stop asking Perry to debate and instead ask him to answer for his failure.

Neil at Texas Liberal "likes" Republican Senator John Cornyn on Facebook. Here is what people on Senator Cornyn's Facebook page wrote when the senator said he would be addressing a group of Hispanic lawyers. Many of the comments were not encouraging.

Libby Shaw tells the tale of Rick Perry's efforts to "spin" the unspinnable -- a $19 billion dollar hole in the state budget. Read the details over at TexasKaos: Watch Rick Perry spin his $18 billion budget deficit.

WhosPlayin encourages voters in Lewisville ISD to vote FOR the two-cent tax increase this Tuesday.

Sunday Funnies (Low Information Nation edition)

Nine years ago now

(This post repeats today from a year ago. It's getting quite a lot of search engine traffic, yesterday and this morning. Be sure and read the text in the lower photo.)



And the recollection is still a little raw. Let's continue to remember and mark the day, and not in that Glenn Beck distorted way, either.

Pastor Qu'ranBurn has exceeded his fifteen minutes

And I hope everyone just tunes him out.

When Pastor Terry Jones lights his proverbial match on Saturday’s scheduled ‘Burn a Qur’an Day’ (or as his ignorance would suggest, ‘Burn a Koran Day’), in Gainesville, Florida, he may as well hurl copies of the Bible and Torah right along into his bonfire.

Unbeknownst to the ‘intellectually astute’ and ‘well-read’ (yes, sarcasm intended) Jones, the Qur’an was built upon the Torah and Bible in many ways, and even contains some of the exact same epic stories as the other two Holy Scriptures. But in a post-9/11 age of fear mongering and hatred, how can someone like Pastor Jones even begin to comprehend that he will in effect be burning chapters on his very own Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?

For the past few months, we as a nation have witnessed an alarming and shocking rise in vitriolic rhetoric and actions against Muslims both domestically and abroad. Juxtaposing a diverse body of over 1.5 billion people with the actions of a few cowards on September 11th, 2001, those that fan the flames of abhorrence have upped the ante more often than not for their own political gain. The result? An innocent cab driver gets stabbed in NY, a proposed mosque site in Tennessee gets burned down, another in California is attacked and left with signs that read ‘No Temple for the God of Terrorism at Ground Zero’, protests ensue around existing and future mosque sites around the country -- including of course lower Manhattan. And now, as a symbolic gesture of solidifying intolerance and plain stupidity, Pastor Jones will hold "suspend" a Medieval-like fire this Saturday at the expense of all who appreciate religious freedom and our place in the world.

Everyone from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to General David Petraeus and now even President Obama have condemned Pastor Jones’ scheduled burning. But where are the voices from the right? Instead of quelling the animosity, their blatant silence and hesitation (can anyone say John Boehner) only reaffirms the notion that they are on Jones’ side.

To their credit FOX will not cover this "news" tomorrow, if it still happens. But the Republicans in Congress ought to be making their objections much louder.

This is, after all, their base.

Update: Silly me. I gave the GOP far too much credit for being reasonable. They are busy creating false equivalencies like "burning a Qu'ran is wrong, so is building a mosque at Ground Zero (sic)" and diverting attention again from the real issues, as well as the real extremists.

The month leading up to the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks has been dominated by a callow and opportunistic debate. This debate -- ostensibly about the rights of American Muslims to build a community center a few blocks from Ground Zero -- is really about the rights of Muslim Americans to be just that: both Muslim and American. And it's ultimately about the strength of our allegiance to one of the best, and sometimes the most difficult, of our American values: the conviction that this country belongs equally to all its citizens, not just those in the ethnic, religious, or political majority.

The campaign against the Park51 community center has succeeded in taking strains of extremist Islamophobia and making them mainstream. The "controversy" was concocted by virulently anti-Islamic blogger Pamela Geller and brought to national attention by mainstream conservatives, most notably Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, hoping to ride the scandal to November. Dozens of political leaders jumped on the anti-Islam bandwagon; the complete silence of many others spoke volumes.

[...]

Some anti-Park51 crusaders, even Palin, denounced Jones' dangerous publicity stunt. But the fact is that his actions would attract little attention, and do little harm, if they weren't taking place in the context of widespread and loud Islamophobia encouraged and implicitly condoned by prominent political leaders. Leaders such as Palin could pretend to be tolerant by denouncing Jones' clear extremism, while all the while continuing to push subtler, more pervasive strains of Islamophobia. The suggestion, made by Palin, John Boehner, and by Jones himself that the Koran-burning event and the building of the Islamic Community Center had some moral equivalence is treacherous indeed, implying that somehow the practice of Islam is itself an offensive act. It's this sort of insidious notion -- passed off as a legitimate argument -- that creates the growing level of distrust of Muslims in our society.

While Jones' event has been called off, Geller still plans to insult the memory of Sept. 11 by holding an anti-Islam march near Ground Zero. Like Jones, she deserves to be marginalized and ignored. Yet instead, her rally has attracted prominent national figures including former UN Ambassador John Bolton and omnipresent blogger Andrew Breitbart -- and, of course, plenty of media attention.

The national leaders who have fueled this zealous mistrust of Muslims, and worked toward making Islamophobia a legitimate political position, have put our troops in harm's way, irreparably injured the war effort that many of them were eager to start, and twisted American values into something very ugly.

Climbing a tree to tell a lie

... rather than standing on the ground and speaking the truth. That's your modern GOP hard at work. Here is Glenn Smith's expose' from HuffPo:

A right-wing group in Houston engaged in a systematic voter suppression and intimidation effort used a doctored photo in its showcase video. Tellingly, a hand-lettered sign carried by an African-American woman at a 2000 Florida, Gore-Lieberman recount rally was changed from, "Don't Mess With Our Vote," to read, "I Only Got to Vote Once."

Huffington Post editors first suspected the photoshopping after I posted "Possible Arson and the Right's Texas Voter Suppression Effort" regarding King Street Patriots' attacks on a nonprofit voter registration effort and the mysterious fire that destroyed all of Harris County's (Houston) voting machines.

In my regular Sunday FireDogLake column, I posted a follow-up piece, "Contempt for Democracy: Attacks on Voting Rights," that included a link to DigitalDupes.org, which had launched an effort to locate the original photo. Within hours, Newshounds found it.

In addition, a Gore/Lieberman sign was altered to read, "I'm With Stupid." Here is the doctored video as presented in King Street Patriots' video, followed by the original photographs.

In the video, King Street leader Catherine Engelbrecht says their effort is all about the truth, that they just want true, fair, honest elections. But if they are so committed to the truth, why did they use doctored photos? Why did they lie?

Because their real intent -- as it has been for similar voter suppression efforts for decades -- is to create barriers between the ballot box and the voters. They want to suppress the vote of people they suspect of opposing their agenda. In this case, as in most, that means assaulting the voting rights of the poor and minorities.

Now why would the Republicans bother with all of this cheating if they were actually as far ahead as the Lamestream Media bleats that they are? No, really; why?

Similar kinds of crap is happening everywhere.

Benjamin Pearcy, a candidate for statewide office in Arizona, lists his campaign office as a Starbucks. The small business he refers to in his campaign statement is him strumming his guitar on the street. The internal debate he is having in advance of his coming televised debate is whether he ought to gel his hair into his trademark faux Mohawk.

Pearcy, 20, is running for a seat on the Arizona Corporation Commission, which oversees public utilities, railroad safety and securities regulation. Although Mr. Pearcy says he is taking his first run for public office seriously, the political establishment here views him as nothing more than a political dirty trick.

Mr. Pearcy and other drifters and homeless people were recruited onto the Green Party ballot by a Republican political operative who freely admits that their candidacies may siphon some support from the Democrats. Arizona’s Democratic Party has filed a formal complaint with local, state and federal prosecutors in an effort to have the candidates removed from the ballot, and the Green Party has urged its supporters to steer clear of the rogue candidates.

“These are people who are not serious and who were recruited as part of a cynical manipulation of the process,” said Paul Eckstein, a lawyer representing the Democrats. “They don’t know Green from red.”

The GOP has to recruit Greens to draw support away from Democrats in Arizona?!? Why, that's almost as ridiculous as their doing so in Texas. Oh, wait ...

Regarding Mr. Eckstein's quote at the end of the excerpt above, naturally our Greens in Texas sure can tell the difference, and they don't care. But that's a digression.

Why don't the Republicans just refocus their efforts? Why don't they try a little harder and come up with some fresh ideas to move the country forward instead of spending all this time, energy, and money on dirty tricks?

Because they can't help themselves; it's just their nature.

Sadder still, people actually do fall for it.  The Republicans constantly pull dirty tricks because it works.

I suppose if this mass delusion actually does manifest itself in November, then the people will get the kind of government they want. But what are the rest of us going to do?