Colorado straw poll this weekend will test early strength of GOP field

Gov. Rick Perry’s name won’t appear on the key Iowa straw poll ballot next month, but he’ll face a test of his strength among Western conservatives this weekend in Denver.

Organizers of the Western Conservative Summit have put Perry on a straw poll ballot along with other major announced and unannounced candidates. Perry is one of two keynote speakers at the event. White House Republican hopeful Rick Santorum, who recently criticized Perry for saying gay marriage policies should be decided by states, is the other one. GOP presidential contender Herman Cain is also scheduled to make an appearance in Denver.

Frothy Mixture has in fact already leveled a withering broadside at Governor Prophet in his speech last night. Santorum's campaign is circling the drain, and he's probably done unless he makes a mark here and in Iowa in a couple of weeks.

More than 900 people who paid to attend the event will get to cast votes in the straw poll, with the results expected to be announced Sunday. All the announced major candidates will appear on the ballot, as will Perry and other possible candidates such as Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin and John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

So it's a full cattle call. But what about "Difficulty Breathing" Christie? And Pataki? I mean, if they're going to put John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani on there, why don't they just put Ronald Reagan on the "ballot" (.pdf) while they're at it?

Because this is a pay-to-play event for what appears to be evangelical Colorado Republicans, the TeaBag Factor is solid. Still I expect to see Jon Huntsman, as the closest thing to a favorite son, do better than he has yet shown. Then again, his recent criticism of Republicans on the issues of the environment and climate change might very well have finished him off.

I'll call the top four Romney, Perry, Bachmann, Huntsman. The headlines on Sunday in that case will be all about Goodhair besting Crazytown. And if Perry should come in first on the strength of a powerful keynote speech, he'll bask in media glory all the way to Monday.

And the Perry Train will be rolling.

Update: Derailed. But extra pepperoni for everyone in America!

Here is the order of finish:

Cain — 48 percent, 246 votes
Perry –13 percent, 67 votes
Santorum — 10 percent, 50 votes
Mitt Romney — 10 percent, 49 votes
Michele Bachmann — 9 percent, 44 votes
John Bolton — 4 percent, 20 votes
Ron Paul — 2 percent, 12 votes
Tim Pawlenty — 1 percent, 7 votes
Sarah Palin — 1 percent, 5 votes
Newt Gingrich — 1 percent, 3 votes
Thaddeus McCotter — 0 percent, 2 votes
Jon Huntsman — 0 percent, 1 vote
Gary Johnson — 0 percent, 1 vote
Paul Ryan -– 0 percent, 1 vote
Rudy Giuliani — 0 percent, 0 votes

Harvey Kronberg carves open the rotten fruit

Just the teasers from his "Daily Buzz" today:

WILL THE TEA PARTY BE THE NEXT ELECTION ALBATROSS

List of constituencies angry with intransigent Congress grows

"Well, apparently they can’t govern," a rueful Republican business lobbyist told me after the Tea Party dominated House Republican Caucus rejected a once in a generation budget compromise: three dollars cut for every dollar raised.

A Democratic consultant angry at President Obama described the compromise as: "…we surrendered and they wouldn’t accept it.”

Another business lobbyist who lives and breathes polling reported a Republican Campaign Congressional Committee source worrying that GOP House numbers are worse than during Terry Schiavo and that the RCCC will not have the dollars to defend a hundred seats.

I stopped laughing at the GOP's dysfunction once it became apparent that they were asking for Jesus' input on how to vote on the debt ceiling. I interrupt Harvey to give you Dana Milbank at the WaPo:

With the nation just days from a default, the chamber is at the mercy of a handful of people who believe they are on a mission from God.

“Where’s the chapel?” Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) asked as he emerged from an arm-twisting session with Majority Leader Eric Cantor Thursday night. The freshman lawmaker explained that he wanted to “go to the divine source.”

In a room off the Capitol Rotunda, Scott joined a prayer session with fellow South Carolinian lawmakers. “I hope the Lord. . . gives men wisdom when they desperately need it,” Scott explained.

As it happens, the Lord gave Scott the wisdom to oppose Boehner. “I think divine inspiration already happened,” Scott said. “I was a ‘lean no’ and now I’m a ‘no.’” And he’s not much worried about default, saying: “I hope the Lord blesses our nation in a way that is measurable.”

The Lord will surely bless the nation with higher interest rates, if not outright economic collapse, in a default.

As bad as that is, this smells even worse.

AG OPINION TAKES WILLINGHAM CASE OFF THE TABLE FOR FORENSICS SCIENCE COMMISSION

Whether or not there was bad science will never be resolved

From the Attorney General's Opinion:

"Although the Forensic Science Commission may conduct investigations of incidents that occurred before September 1, 2005, the law that created the Commission prohibits the FSC from considering evidence that was tested or offered into evidence prior to that date. The Forensic Science Commission's investigative authority is limited to those laboratories, facilities, or entities that were accredited by the Department of Public Safety at the time the forensic analyses took place. The FSC may not investigate fields of forensic analysis expressly excluded from the statutory definition of "forensic analysis." Forensic analysis that is neither expressly included nor excluded by the Act or DPS rule, but that falls under the generic definition of "forensic analysis" found in section 38.35(a)(4), is generally subject to FSC investigation, assuming all other statutory requirements are satisfied."

Greg Abbott once again plays Tom Hagen to Rick Perry's Vito Corleone.

And this is the guy who wants to be the next governor or lieutenant governor. And only the fortuitous calamity of Rick Perry being elected president and David Dewhurst being elected senator in 2012 will stop him, too.

God Bless Texas (with fewer conservatives, please).

Friday Praise God Funnies

Because tar sands oil is "good"

Behold the Ethical Oil campaign.

"Forced Labour? Or Good Jobs?"
Degradation? Or reforestation?
Funding terrorism, or peacekeeping?
Persecution, or (gay) pride?
Indigenous peoples killed? Or hired?
Conflict Oil? Or Ethical Oil?

George Orwell would be so proud.

My phone call to John Culberson this morning *update*

One of his very courteous staff members took my call a few minutes ago. I said this:

"In 1985, the top five percent of households, the wealthiest five percent, had net worth of $8 trillion. Today, the top five percent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth (in 25 years) than the whole human race had created prior to 1980." That's a quote from David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, in 2010.

Please remind the Congressman for me that we do NOT have a SPENDING problem in this country; we have a REVENUE problem. We have a revenue problem because of George W. Bush's two wars and tax cuts for the afore-mentioned wealthiest Americans, and because W's buddies on Wall Street wrecked the economy before he could leave office in the fall of 2008.

And please ask Congressman Culberson, respectfully, to stand down; move out of the way and let the grownups raise the debt ceiling. And then a discussion about solving the budget deficit created by Bush can take place, separately from that. The President has indicated his willingness to have that conversation and make that deal.

Ask Congressman Culberson for me to please STOP holding the full faith and credit of the United States government hostage to his extreme partisan agenda.

She was very pleasant and polite and actually let me say all of that.

One more thing: as a result of 2012 redistricting I will be represented by Sheila Jackson Lee. Really, that's a blessing from the Invisible Man in the Clouds, also known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Update: MoveOn.org activists went to Culberson's office Wednesday for a noon meeting, and here's the report on that.

About fourteen of us met with several press people outside the building at 11:45. Channel 2, Fox News, and an “independent news photographer” were there. Mary Schultz read her prepared letter which the whole group had signed. We then went up to the office, where we all were greeted quite politely and brought into the conference room, which we filled. Members of the group, which included Jerry Wald and Charlie Mauch of the Houston Peace and Justice Center, were articulate and well-informed and our discussion lasted about an hour. However, Culberson’s chief of staff made it quite clear that Culberson was totally unyielding about raising any taxes on corporations or the wealthy. Their main reason: the corporations might move ALL of the jobs overseas. ... Another very important thing he told us –- their office has received many, many phone calls telling them NO TAXES, but they don’t hear from our side.

Oh he hears. He just doesn't listen. Here's the appropriate response to "the corporations might move all the jobs overseas":

Henry Ford, one of this nation's most successful businessmen, saw the value of paying well-above-prevailing-scale wages to his employees. It reduced turnover and absenteeism and made his company a model corporate citizen for its time. One of the "family values" we have lost in this country includes our corporations treating all of their people -- not just the executives -- like members of its family. Perhaps Congressman Culberson could use his influence with business leaders to remind them of Henry Ford's words:

"There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible."

A far cry from exporting jobs overseas, to be certain.

The Weekly Wrangle

The thoughts and prayers of the Texas Progressive Alliance are with the people of Norway as we bring you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff has an update on redistricting litigation that's being filed.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the Lite Gov.'s latest move: Dewhurst announces for Senate, commits to gutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

A couple of Republican bloggers thought they were breaking news with murmurings of a Texas Senate Demoratic primary challenge by Sylvia Garcia to Mario Gallegos. By the end of the day the senator, the former county commissioner, and their shared political consultant shot the rumor down in flames. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs reminds you why you just shouldn't believe anything posted on conservative blogs.

Lightseeker at Texas Kaos takes a shot at connecting some sad dots in Republican Lies, their connection to our looming doctor shortage and corporate power. It turns out that making public policy by using the repeated Big Lie will come back to bite you in the ass after all.

Neil at Texas Liberal has begun to read Rick Perry's book "Fed Up!" Neil is finding this great work to be very enjoyable so far.

At WhosPlayin, Regina responds to all those forwarded emails, and gives a dozen good reasons why she can't support Rick Perry for President.

Sunday Funnies

Cenk Uygur explains why he parted company with MSNBC

Link this video to the definition of integrity in the dictionary.

Speaking on his "Young Turks" show, Uygur said that, though the ratings for his show had been satisfying MSNBC executives, his "tone" had not. According to his version of events, his departure from the network was the culmination of a lengthy struggle with MSNBC management who wanted him to be more buttoned down.

Uygur said that, in April, MSNBC president Phil Griffin called him in for a talk. Griffin allegedly told him that "people in Washington" were concerned with his tone on the show.

"'Outsiders are cool, but we're the establishment,'" Griffin said, according to Uygur, who said he was also told to book more Republicans on the show. He claimed to have been stunned by the conversation, and said he ignored Griffin's advice.

Though his ratings increased, Uygur said that, a couple of weeks ago, he was informed that he would not be getting the permanent slot at 6 PM, but was instead offered a smaller contributor role for twice the salary. He said he turned it down because, in his words, he did not want to work at a place "that didn't want to challenge power."

See you on Current, Cenk.

Update: More Cenk, from the Sunday 7/24 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources ...

Sylvia Garcia v. Mario Gallegos

It doesn't quite crackle like Castro versus Doggett, but it would be a significant development all the same. Republican handicapper Robert Miller:

Former Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia is quietly mulling whether to run against Sen. Mario Gallegos, although no decision has been made or is necessarily imminent. Garcia reported $751,601 cash on hand as of June 30; Gallegos reported $71,190 cash on hand. They both use Robert Jara as their consultant, so it will be interesting to watch this unfold.

Mike Hailey's Capitol Inside scored Jara's Campaign Strategies Inc. as the most influential Democratic political consultant in the state in 2008. (2010? Not so much.) Jara was also the fellow who drew the 2011 Houston city council map for district J, an Hispanic pickup opportunity district. And speaking of Hailey and CI (subs. req.) with respect to Gallegos and Garcia ...

Two longtime friends and allies could become adversaries if former Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia decides to challenge State Senator Mario Gallegos in the Democratic primary election in 2012.

Garcia - the first woman ever elected to the commissioners court in the state's largest county - has been weighing a possible bid for the Texas Senate but keeping the deliberations under wraps on what could turn out to be a very touchy subject in Hispanic political circles from Houston to Austin.

While Senate incumbents are usually big favorites in re-election campaigns, Garcia has the potential to be Gallegos' worst nightmare from a political perspective if she runs against him in next year's primary.

Garcia and Gallegos have been two of the most prominent forces in Latino politics in the state's largest metropolitan area for much of the past two decades. They've also been good friends as evidenced when the veteran legislator was sworn in by Garcia as "governor for the day" in 2007 when Gallegos had been serving as Senate pro tem.

And there's that troublesome money race mentioned again, the one that Sylvia leads 10-1.

Garcia would arguably be the toughest foe that Gallegos has faced at the polls in a 20-year legislative career. Garcia would not only match the incumbent in name ID, she'd enter a primary fight with a substantial edge in funding. The ex-commissioner had a $750,000 surplus in her campaign account at the end of last month while Gallegos reported cash on hand of $72,000 on June 30 - the lowest amount for a state senator in Texas.

My opinion? Best of good health in your retirement, Mario.

Update: Dan McClung, Jara's partner at Campaign Strategies, issued the following denial this afternoon.

Senator Mario Gallegos and former Commissioner Sylvia Garcia are longtime friends and strong political allies. They are also both decades-long clients and friends of this firm, and as its Senior Partner, I have spoken with both this morning and each has asked me to say to you and others that a race between them is not a possibility.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates Japan for its hard-earned victory in the women's World Cup championship as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff wonders how big the next state deficit will be. Because we're surely going to have one.

McBlogger takes a look at the Republicans' most recent effort to give us RyanFraud.

As rumors of a Rick Perry presidential bid grow stronger, brace yourself for the Perry propaganda. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme has officially warned you.

With Ron Paul's declination to run again for Congress, a muddy scrum broke out for the vacancy he leaves in CD-14. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs collects the names of some of the rumored entrants.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson shows us that the GOP's governing scheme continues: preach fiscal conservatism all the while running up debt to historic levels. Texas' debt has exploded under Perry.

Neil at Texas Liberal notes that Republican Texas Agriculture Commissioner and lt. governor wannabe Todd Staples loves federal money. Neil also observed that Texas counties that voted strongly Republican in 2010 also love federal money.

Sunday Funnies

On loyalty

Greg and I are having a little digression about who's better and who's worse than whom when it comes to God in a prior post. Matt's chiming in. I wrote the following elsewhere this morning, inspired by the photo there, and thought I'd bring it back over here and expand on it some.

Loyalty -- patriotism and pride and its other synonyms -- and the corresponding boost it gives to one's self-respect is inculcated from early age, certainly in the US, perhaps in other countries. The first complete sentence most of us learn as children is the Pledge of Allegiance, because we recited it each morning from first grade (kindergarten?) forward. "Be true to your school". "Texas Pride" (there used to be a beer named this). Lee Greenwood's song.

There once was a distinct separation of Godliness from patriotism in American public schools; there was when I came through, anyway. Yes, the Pledge added "under God" in 1954 and that development was about ten years old when I began school, but the first time I can recall the two intersecting -- 'colliding' is probably better -- was when I caught myself staring at two Jehovah's Witnesses in my (new school to me) third grade class who stayed in their seats for the Pledge. But today loyalty is increasingly intertwined with religiosity in American public life.

It may be the seed that grows into the conservative notion of American exceptionalism. "God Bless America" in the seventh inning stretch of MLB games now gets the same treatment as the National Anthem: players, umpires, fans remove caps, stand at attention, place hands over hearts. Football players point at the sky after scoring touchdowns, baseball players regularly thank God for their home run right off the bat (pun) in postgame interviews, nearly every public gathering of any kind opens with the Pledge or a prayer or both.

This sort of public, prominent  demonstration of the depth of one's faith used to be met with mild scorn. "Jesus freaks", they were called. Today that gets met with an aggressive victimology by Christians. "How dare these Godless heathens criticize our right to pray in public?!"

A much more unfortunate development is the advance of Christianism into the political realm. Our most recent example is, of course, Rick Perry's "Response". A sitting governor organizes a prayer event in a football stadium ... and oddly chooses to exclude from it religions that aren't Christian, that did not immigrate to North America with Caucasians.

And it is increasingly part of the premise that not comporting oneself in this new tradition leaves one open to be criticized as disloyal -- unpatriotic, un-American, anti-American. Dare not even suggest that this trend might be inappropriate for the health of our republican democracy.

I'd rather write more exclusively about politics but for a moment it'll be about my religious experience growing up, so my own motivations might be better understood..

The concept of one Christian denomination being better than another was also introduced to me early on, in my father's failed attempts to indoctrinate me into his Church of Christ. The preachers (they never called them pastors) and the church elders and deacons regularly assailed the Catholic church for its false god, the Baptists and the Methodists for using musical accompaniment, and the Pentecostals and Jehovahs for just being plain crazy. I was as appalled at this behavior as I was at the notion that there was an invisible man in the clouds who could see everything I had ever done, hear and remember everything I ever said, kept a ledger of it all and was prepared at any moment to pass judgment on me with it (along with everybody else in the world).

You know, when you're a 'tween and you're trying to get your rocks off and that idea suddenly enters your head, it's over. (But I never was much for guilt either. No percentage in it for me.) When I got older and thought this out a bit more, one of the conclusions I reached was that there must be a real backlog of cases in that courtroom.

Everybody has probably had, at least once, a tyrant for a boss in their working life -- the closest equivalent to a vengeful, vindictive God, perhaps -- but to choose to live at the tip of that spear for the entirety of one's life on Earth? Under pain of eternal Hell?  Seems like a pretty miserable existence. I always felt a little better about the red print in the New Testament, and the words of Mohandas Gandhi: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

There are a couple of movies which come pretty close to inspiring my current ideas about religion: Defending Your Life, with Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, and Rip Torn; and Dogma with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and George Carlin as a pompous, publicity-seeking Catholic cardinal.

Anywho I need to get some semblance of work done this morning so I'm going to stop here and maybe pick it up again with an update to this or in the comments, depending on what reactions it draws.

Update: Ahh, just the reaction I was expecting. None.

Annie Savoy: I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring... which makes it like sex. ... I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.