Recent post updates

Re: More Senate stirrings and The Bush family pushback against the Tea Party ...

-- Dewhurst does DC, so does Leppert (ew):

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, widely presumed to start the race for U.S. Senate as the favorite if he decides to run, was in Washington (last) Thursday to meet with members of the Texas delegation on a range of issues.

Dewhurst was spotted in a meeting with a group of GOP lawmakers over the lunch hour, and a spokesman confirmed that the lieutenant governor was on the Hill to talk policy. ...

Asked if his political future was a subject of discussion during the meetings, Walz would only say that Dewhurst "was encouraged by his meetings with members of the delegation." ...

Rep. Joe Barton, now infamous nationally for apologizing to BP during the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, told The Hill Thursday he likely would not pursue a Senate bid if Dewhurst does.

A GOP lobbyist also tells POLITICO that Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert was making the rounds in Washington Thursday.

Leppert, who recently announced he would not run for another mayoral term, is also toying with a Senate bid, but will face the challenge of being a regional candidate with little statewide name recognition.

-- Two Railroad Commissioners join the fray ...

Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams formally announced he would run for the U.S. Senate at a Texas Tribune forum Thursday morning.

During his announcement Williams told the Tribune's Evan Smith that he and former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who's also running, would probably attract some of the same supporters. He blasted the federal government for the Environmental Protection Agency "is sticking its nose in our business." He also said that he didn't feel that Dewhurst was the front-runner in contest.

He made a point of referring to himself as the "big dog" in the primary. He most certainly has the biggest head in the affair. Meanwhile, EAJ makes a little tiny ripple ...

Construction workers Jim Graf of Houston and Stacy Roberts of Conroe know barbecue, which is why they took a break from putting up a new Pizza Hut to chow down on brisket, chicken, beans and slaw at Goode Company Barbecue on Kirby. They didn't know Elizabeth Ames Jones, the Texas railroad commissioner who, coincidentally, was setting up in the parking lot out front on this chilly Tuesday to tout her candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

"State senate or U.S. Senate?" Graf wanted to know.

"Republican or Democrat?" Roberts asked.

Ah ha ha ha ha.  More:

Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones continued her U.S. Senate announcement tour at the Texas Capitol, showing up a bit later than scheduled this afternoon with an anti-Washington message she hopes will take her to Washington....

There wasn't a crowd to greet her, although there were some supporters on hand -- including her husband, two nephews and former Texas Supreme Court justice Craig Enoch -- plus a handful of reporters who asked questions afterward.

Even Big Jolly is less than impressed. Kuffner has a bit more.

Re: The Texas Budget Cluster ... let's just load up the linkage.

-- As Perry bashed Recovery Act, Texas relied more heavily on stimulus funds than any other state to fill budget hole (Think Progress)

... in addition to filling nearly his entire budget gap with Recovery Act funds, Perry also used the Build America Bonds program — created as part of the Recovery Act — to fund billions of dollars in infrastructure projects. He also grandstanded against — and then promptly accepted — federal funding meant to prevent teacher layoffs.

-- Senate Passes Voter ID (Austin Chronicle)

-- The first ten amendments to the Voter ID bill and their fates, and the 11th through the 24th, and the 25th through 38th.

-- What would veteran lawmakers do about Texas' budget deficit? (Dallas News)

Pre-SOTU toons

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers on their advancement to the Super Bowl -- and notes the delicious irony in that they are playing the game in Dallas -- as it brings you this week's roundup.

WhosPlayin helped organize a cleanup for an historic African American cemetery dating back to about 1845 that had been the target of litterbugs and illegal dumpers. Respect for the dead, and respect for the land are still values that people from left and right can agree on.

Off the Kuff analyzed the initial Republican budget proposal and the utter havoc it would wreak on the state.

TXsharon at BLUEDAZE: Drilling Reform for Texas reported on two important developments on hydraulic fracturing: 1) the EPA is confident gas in Parker County water wells is from the Barnett Shale, and 2) the media took a lie about the EPA and regulating diesel fuel and repeated it without fact checking.

At Letters From Texas, Harold points out that Rick Perry keeps calling things "emergencies" that aren't, and continues to ignore emergencies that are.

Capitol Annex takes a look at a study showing that Texas gets an "F" when it comes to reporting outbreaks of food-borne illness and wonders why the media wasn't paying attention last year when candidates were making an issue of food safety in Texas.

There's a muddy, grunting scrum developing among the Republicans coveting the US Senate seat Kay Bailey is vacating, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs posts an update at a safe distance from the bottom of the pile.

Exactly why does Governor Perry want to insist that you can cut spending and maintain services? McBlogger's pretty sure it's a case of cognitive dissonance.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos gets it dead right whem she tells Goodhair to Man Up Governor Perry. Of course he won't. He has already double-downed on completing the demolition of Texas public education according to everything coming out about the new state budget.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants to know why Republicans hate people so very much.

TexasVox welcomes guest blogger Jim Hightower as part of a one-two punch on the nuclear waste dump in West Texas: Hightower's Dumping on Texas for Fun and Profit and an expose of Harold Simmons' last-minute contributions to Texas politicians in 2010.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote on the massive budget deficit in Texas, offering the view that Republican mismanagement of the state is not the only reason for the shortfall. Neil also cites poor citizenship by the many Texans who don't want to pay taxes in a state with no income tax, but who at the same time kick up a fuss when government services they use are cut.

Rick Perry's emergencies

If you had the slightest doubt about Governor Zoolander running for president, you can put that aside now.

Legislation requiring women seeking an abortion to first have a sonogram is an emergency that merits expedited consideration by the Legislature, Gov. Rick Perry told anti-abortion activists on Saturday.

A bill backed by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Houston state Sen. Dan Patrick will be granted emergency status, Perry told more than a thousand anti-abortion protesters at a rally. They had gathered at the Capitol on the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

[...]

The governor has previously announced four other emergency items for legislators to consider: eminent domain reform, ending "sanctuary city" policies that don't require police to check the immigration status of people they stop or arrest, a voter identification bill, and calling for an amendment to the US Constitution that would mandate a balanced federal budget.

The issues that Perry has given emergency status are important to his base of conservative activists and to the tea party movement.

Harold Cook has the lightest response, but this is really no laughing matter.

Tomorrow the Texas Senate will take up his first "emergency" -- voter ID -- in a 'committee of the whole' session.

It will eventually pass, and the only question is the level of opposition the minority will be able to muster. Whatever that amount is, how intense it may be, it will still only be symbolic.

Voter ID has the sole intention -- no matter how loudly or often Republicans claim it is something else -- of stifling Democratic turnout. Even prominent Republicans say that it will place a likely-insurmountable hardship on many of the elderly. But then that's just how they roll.

Moving forward, Democrats in Texas will have to make sure their voters have proper identification according to the legislation that will be crafted. Voters, for their part, are going to have to accept responsibility for making certain they are "qualified" to cast a ballot ... according to the GOP's definition of the word.

This additional voting requirement still won't stop disqualifications at polls, particularly those run by GOP election judges, nor will it end the thuggish tactics of the King Street Patriot/True the Vote denizens.

But it's going to be the new reality, just like community colleges closing, a hundred thousand teachers across Texas hitting the unemployment lines, and Medicaid patients dying because the the state no longer wants to pay for their care.

This is what a majority of Texans voted for last November. How do you like it so far?

Update: Burka, on the governor's priorities ...

I suspect that most governors, like 48 or 49 out of 50, would be embarrassed to fast-track such proposals when their state was facing a $27 billion budget deficit that is partly the result of the governor’s own policies, but nothing seems to be too blatantly political to embarrass Perry. And I think the reason no one really is wringing their hands over the governor’s upside-down priorities is that we long ago ceased to expect anything more.

And Gary Denton, on the V-ID bill ...

1) The legislation does not provide any alternatives to photo identification examples of identification that will no longer be acceptable to voter include student id cards, Medicaid/Medicare cards, expired driver’s licenses, expired passports, expired military id cards, birth certificates, official government letters, and employer id cards even if issued by a governmental entity.

[...]

9) Implementing redistricting plans and extremely strict photo id laws right before a Presidential election is a recipe for disaster in voter confusion.

The people most impacted by this bill will be students, (those who have) recently married (or) recently moved, very low income, elderly, legal immigrants, handicapped, (and) mainly urban dwellers who don't drive a car. These groups all lean Democratic so the Republicans count this bill as a success, getting any edge possible for elections.

And John Tanner, on why the V-ID bill will not withstand a court challenge.

Sunday Funnies

The final Countdown

Keith Olbermann was MSNBC's most popular personality and single-handedly led its transformation to an outspoken, left-leaning cable news network in prime time. Despite that, he often seemed to be walking on a tightrope with his job. Friday night, it snapped.


Olbermann returned from one last commercial break on "Countdown" to tell viewers it was his last broadcast, and read a James Thurber short story in a three-minute exit statement. Simultaneously, MSNBC e-mailed a statement that "MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract." The network thanked him and said, "we wish him well in his future endeavors."

Neither MSNBC President Phil Griffin, Olbermann nor his manager responded to requests to explain an exit so abrupt that Olbermann's face was still being featured on an MSNBC promotional ad 30 minutes after he had said goodbye.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The shock and awe was apparent in our household as well as everywhere else online I reached for details. Josh Marshall, who had been on the program in the first segment, was no less taken aback than everyone else.

No leaks, even with what must have been a late-in-the-day decision. They all kept a damn good secret, didn't they?

Various reports have Olbermann being let go because of Comcast's swallowing of NBC Universal earlier in the week, that he got fired because he said no to another  extension of his contract ($30 million for four years, signed in 2008 to make sure he was with the network through the 2012 election), and/or that he quit because Jeff Zucker was also shown the door in the wake of the Comcast-NBC merger. Anderson Cooper led his 9 pm (Central) broadcast on CNN with the news and reaction, most of it indicating that KO's mercurial personality had as much to do with his departure as anything else.

I would believe any of those versions. I would also observe that one thing MSNBC has been very good at over the years is throwing out their top talent if it doesn't toe their line. See Donahue, Phil and Banfield, Ashleigh and Shuster, David for evidence.

I'm a huge fan and I'll miss Countdown, but I'm not too concerned about KO's future and not just because money isn't the be-all-and-end-all for the dude (MSNBC is paying him his remaining contracted $14 mil). In six months -- after his non-compete expires -- he'll have an hour on Oprah's network, or HBO or someplace else where they aren't afraid of the brutal truth. He'll be wielding another very large, very loud megaphone, tormenting the Right into another derangement syndrome simply by relentlessly exposing their lies and hypocrisy.

And the same goes for Maddow, and Schultz and O'Donnell and Seder and Uyger and Stein and ...

Enjoy your sabbatical, Keith, and we'll see you when you get back.

Update:

Friday’s separation agreement between MSNBC and Mr. Olbermann includes restrictions on when he can next lead a television show and when he can give interviews about the decision to end his association with the news channel.

[...]

The decision was completed one year to the day from the last time NBC decided to end a relationship with an on-air star: Conan O’Brien. Mr. O’Brien agreed in the deal not to start up a new television show for nine months, and not to grant interviews for five months. The executives involved in the discussions with Mr. Olbermann said his agreement was not dissimilar to Mr. O’Brien’s.