Sunday Funnies

Ames to ... please?

Out of 16,892 straws drawn, Michele Bachmann won 4,823 (28.6%) to Ron Paul's 4,671 (27.7%). Tim Pawlenty, who had focused on a strong showing in the straw poll to rescue his struggling campaign, finished a distant third with 2,293 (13.6%) in a bruising setback. Bumping along behind the horses in the money, garnering in the high single digits percentage-wise, were Rick Santorum and Herman Cain.

Mitt Romney, who won this beauty contest four years ago, declined to defend his title and came in seventh with 3.3%. He trailed even a non-attending write-in candidate.

Yes. The front-runner for the national campaign lost to ...

Governor Prophet earned 718 write-ins and 4%, yet chose to make his long-anticipated entry to the GOP presidential primary from over a thousand miles away from Iowa -- in the cradle of American secession -- but at virtually the same moment the candidates in Ames began speaking.

Romney's brand of Republican moderation will play a little better in New Hampshire, but this is essentially a three-man, one-woman contest already.

Despite what The Grifter from Wasilla may interpret from the concurrent 'corn kernel' poll.

Separately, attendees voted in a corn kernel poll, which measures the support of each Republican by the number of kernels in their respective Mason jar. By late morning, the kernel level in Sarah Palin’s jar rose just above the best-known GOP candidates — even though the former Alaska governor has not declared her intentions yet for 2012.

"There is still plenty of room in that field for common-sense conservatives who have executive experience," Palin said during a fair visit. "Watching the debate not just last night but watching this whole process over the last year it certainly shows me that yeah, there is plenty of room for more people."

Yeah. Yeah!

Update: Ted with more. Oh, and Pawlenty gives up his seat in the clown car.

So long, T-Paw. We hardly knew ye.

Update II: Is Rick Perry man enough to gobble a corn dog, thereby rescuing Michele Bachmann from the vicious sexism leveled at her by the global online community?

Update III: Praise God.

Do the King Street Patriots intend to turn away veterans at the polls?

Open Source Dem recently made a presentation to Harris County Democrats about the challenges facing them with regard to the new election law requirements surrounding voter registration, voter ID, and the like. Here's a synopsis.

==========

There is one piece of news and three main messages to bring back from the Secretary of State’s 29th Annual Election Law Seminar in Austin.

The SoS reiterated for voter registrars and election officials that the voter ID requirement, which can be met with a vaguely-defined “military identity card”, does not include the photo ID issued to military veterans by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The VA card is not issued by the US Department of Defense. The Veterans Administration -- now the Department of Veterans’ Affairs -- headed by General Shinseki is now a cabinet-level office, second in number of employees only to the DoD itself.

The VA card is a high-value and high-quality photo ID document linked to medical and military records. It is not a voting credential in its own right, since like any other military identification document, it may be issued to a non-citizen. Still, as a practical matter it is probably a better authentication document than a DPS-issued card. Of course buried in all of this voter ID business is nothing more or less than a constant demand that people who do not look like Republican voters produce arcane documents to prove again and again that they are not just eligible and registered to vote but that they are “qualified” to vote in in the eyes of hostile clerks who suspect, but cannot prove, they are not convicts or wards.

The VA card is reasonably “a United States military identification card that contains the person’s photograph that has not expired or that expired no earlier than 60 days before the date of presentation”, to quote the statute. As with other military identification cards, it does not expire except at death, but can be revoked. That is how much real understanding of authentication matters the legislature or the Governor’s office truly have: none. Revocation, expiration, what’s the difference? A lot!

But what the GOP, the Tea Party, and the King Street Patriots do understand is voter suppression.

Indeed, the VA card is the second most common form of photo ID after the Texas driver’s license (which does expire). The GOP is limiting access to the polls any and every way they can with no pushback from the Democratic echelons or branches of government. Is there a suffrage lobby or movement today? Evidently not.

So what do Texas Democrats really care about? A VA hospital in the Rio Grande valley? Or a statewide voter registration program for homeless veterans? Perhaps a full measure of dignity and recognition for all veterans presenting themselves to vote? Here’s a clue: Democrats will never benefit from the first two unless they can provide the third of these.

The VA is recognized in Texas election law as one of the two federal authorities for exempting a person from the photo ID requirement altogether, although it is inconceivable that an exempt veteran would not have a VA card. Catch 22. How much more military than that can you get?

What is not news is that the voter ID requirement has nothing to do with authenticating voters and all the world to do with levying costly economic and often impassable physical barriers to suffrage: a poll tax, in so much legal verbosity.

It is not clear what if any response the Democratic Party or the Obama administration will have to any of this. So far they have contributed to the legal verbosity and, of course, capitulated to the Secretary of State.

Update:

State Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) and Charlie Jones of Texas Democratic Veterans will host a press conference to discuss the Texas Secretary of State’s interpretation of the GOP-backed voter ID bill (SB 14) to bar the VA benefit card as an acceptable form of military ID. The press conference will take place Friday, August 12, 2011, at VFW Post #76, 10 Tenth Street, San Antonio TX.

Republicans square off in Iowa debate tonight

Here's the advance from Chris Cillizza. Jon Huntsman will be the new face in the first GOP face-off since June. No Rick Perry in Ames -- despite his attempt to upstage the event -- and no Palin.

The star of the show is likely to be Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who's been riding a wave of momentum since her strong performance in the June debate in New Hampshire. Polling shows Bachmann running strong in Iowa and she is the favorite to win Saturday's Ames Straw Poll.

Bachmann's rise over the past two months ensures she will be on the receiving end of barbs from her rivals as they seek to slow her progress. How she handles the slings and arrows will be a major storyline to watch.

The other person to keep an eye on is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Romney enters the debate as the frontrunner for the nomination. But he won't be competing in the straw poll over the weekend and is de-emphasizing the Iowa caucuses in his plans to win the nomination. Expect the other people on stage to mock Romney's on-again, off-again plans in the state.

The Iowa caucuses are still months away, but debates are rare moments when voters pay attention long enough to compare and contrast. Any winner in this one gets media and money.

Romney's "Corporations are people, too" gaffe is liable to hurt him. If not among the other oligarchs on the stage, then with conservatives and independents who aren't so inclined to feel empathy for the INCs and the LLCs and the PCs and so on. Surely there are some of those somewhere ...

The debate will be showing everywhere you care (or don't) to watch on your teevee -- or online -- this evening.

Update: More from The Ticket ...

Tomorrow, Sarah Palin, who is flirting with her own White House bid, will revive her bus tour in Iowa, visiting the state fair in Des Moines, and threatening to upstage other GOP hopefuls in the state. On Saturday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will officially declare his intentions to run for president in South Carolina--a speech that happens to be scheduled on the same day as the Ames straw poll.


A week from now, we will likely know more about the make-up of the so-far volatile GOP field. Can Rommey hold on to his position as frontrunner? Is Perry the savior many GOP voters are looking for? Can Pawlenty gain enough momentum to save his lackluster campaign? Will Ron Paul be taken seriously? And can Huntsman and Newt Gingrich—two candidates whose campaigns have fallen short of expectations—survive? Is Palin even running?

Here's a quick look at what's at stake for some of the leading GOP contenders ...

One of the reasons I objected to The Response

Because I also know first-hand how filled with love many Christians are.

The Fox News Facebook page got over 8,000 death threats posted on its wall after the communications director for the group American Atheists, Blair Scott, appeared on the network’s “America Live” discussing the group’s lawsuit hoping to stop the erection of a crucifix at the World Trade Center Memorial.

The admins of Fox’s Facebook page worked furiously to delete the hateful posts, but not before the atheist blogger behind One Man’s Blog managed to capture screenshots, some of which we’ve reproduced below.

Organizers of the 9/11 museum feel that the cross, which is a symbol of hope for many, should have a place at the memorial. And then there are those other folks who passionately disagree with Scott’s group and who are behaving in a manner that is contrary to their religion fundamentals.

Christians are up in arms about Blair’s television appearance and have waged an all-out war against his possibly blocking the memorial’s plans. Reportedly, by the time Blair returned to his office, his voicemail was full to capacity with threat messages from Christians who were seething with hatred.

Well, it doesn't look like this is going to be our century.

2011 vs. 1980

Eric Berger, SciGuy:

I’m running out of superlatives to describe this summer’s heat, so this week I’m going to focus in on 100-degree days, especially after the run of them we’ve had to start August. So far every day this month has reached the century mark.

All told this summer we’ve had eighteen 100-degree days. That’s more than three times the normal for a Houston summer, which is five. But it’s not the most.

The city’s record for most 100-degree days came in 1980, with 32. The following table shows how our 100-degree days each month stack up. We’re already seventh this year with just one-quarter of the month gone.

Rank	June	July	August	September
1.	10 (1902)	18 (1980)	14 (1993)	5 (2000)
2.	8 (1980)	13 (1998)	10 (1999)	4 (1995)
3.	7 (2011)	10 (2000)	9 (1902)	3 2005)
4.	7 (2009)	7 (1909)	8 (1998)	2 (1909)
5.	4 (1906)	5 (1978)	8 (1962)	2 (1907)
6.	2 (1998)	4 (2011)	8 (1907)	1 (1985)
7.	2 (1934)	4 (2009)	7 (2011)	1 (1980)
8.	2 (1930)	4 (1995)	7 (1951)	None
9.	2 (1911)	4 (1986)	7 (1909)	None
10.	1 (2006)	4 (1969)	6 (2009)	None

.

Interestingly there’s never been a 100-degree day in Houston in May, although it did hit 99 degrees in 1996.

I spent June through August 1980, my last summer before graduating from Lamar University, as a laborer at the Mobil (now Exxon Mobil, of course) refinery in Beaumont. Two things I remember ...

1. Just as Eric's chart above indicates, it was 100 degrees or more nearly every day in July (August was strangely cooler). I was assigned to the coking unit and they took the furnaces down for a maintenance turnaround. We would crawl into them, clean them out for a few minutes, and then come out. It was about 115-120 even after those giant ovens had cooled overnight, and exiting them into the one-hundred-degree air outside felt like opening the freezer door in your face -- an instant but brief blast of coolness.

2. Just before I was about to leave the plant for the fall semester, Hurricane Allen swirled into the Gulf and rapidly strengthened to a Category 5. That hurricane was so big that the radar pictures showed him filling the entire Gulf of Mexico. We spent a couple of days scrambling all over that coker pulling down hoses and buckets and mallets and wrenches and anything else that could conceivably become a projectile in a gale-force wind.

(If you haven't already read the Wiki link above, Allen eventually went in just north of Brownsville and took a straight shot at Big Bend before petering out.)

That was the hottest, dirtiest, meanest, nastiest summer of my life. But this one's coming close to it.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Response blew into Houston, raised the temperature a few more insufferable degrees, and left quickly without spending any money or delivering any rain. The Texas Progressive Alliance, meanwhile, is praying for a cool snap and drought relief as it brings you this week's roundup.

There's still redistricting going on, as Harris County tries to redraw its county commissioners' precincts. So far, the main thing they've done is attract a lawsuit from Latinos who say they have retrogressed the one Latino opportunity district. Off the Kuff has the scoop.

The Response had better than expected attendance, a very diverse crowd, and the event's sponsors made a sincere effort to have the event be all about one man (not the governor of Texas). Having praised it, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs then proceeded to rip it. Wide open.

Our economy is in bad shape and is unlikely to get better any time soon. WCNews at Eye On Williamson tells us the reason why: The politics of the economy are upside down.

Prior to The Response, Letters From Texas predicted the response to the response to The Response.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is disgusted with the republican campaign to destroy the middle class, kick the poor to kingdom come and abandon the elderly.

This week Left of College Station began Rick Perry's Texas project, telling the truth about the governor's record in Texas. From Perry's scores on climate change to the fact that the Texas economic miracle was really a stimulus miracle.

Lightseeker offers his take on Why Democrats Lose Texas Elections. Hint: It's NOT because we are too Liberal! See the whole analysis at TexasKaos.

This week at McBlogger, Harry offers forth from the Book of Balczak his take on Prayerapalooza.

Sunday Funnies

Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

-- Epicurus

The scene inside and outside Reliant

Let's say some nice things first.

I believe the crowd was closer to 30,000 than any other number. I was on the floor of the stadium, to the left front of the stage and ahead of the soundboard but three rows back in the second seating section, by 8:25 yesterday morning.

The crowd was not only much larger than projected but also very diverse. I expected mostly white, middle-aged, and well-fed but there were many younger people of all creeds. In front of me was a row of high school -- or maybe college-age -- kids: one skinny tall red-headed Caucasian with a scruffy little beard, next to a shorter and even thinner black guy, next to a girl of Indio-Pakistani descent, next to her African-American girl friend, with two more of their Latina friends behind them.

They all not only held hands with God and prayed and sang at the top of their lungs but also bounced and pogo'd throughout the musical accompaniment, which occupied much of the time leading up to about 10 a.m.

In my row and those behind me were nearly all middle-aged and senior white people, but there was also a Hispanic family wearing Texans jerseys, having walked over after that morning's team practice across the street. Two guys, one woman -- all of them no more than late '20's, two little guys about 10 or so. The kids were munching from a big tub of popcorn, and the aroma was as sinful as it always is. I saw a senior Asian couple walking slowly arm in arm. Nearly no wheelchairs or walkers and no scooters (mobility-challenged people might have had a special section that I didn't see, higher up). But very few coming in, maybe because Reliant is so damned difficult for them to access -- long, sloping ramps or escalators being the primary entry.

The Responders were just as demographically mixed as any game at the ballpark I've been to, any street festival or outdoor concert in Houston. There were plenty of southern Baptist conventioneers by appearance, to be sure. Many obvious, ah, rural folk. But many Latinos and many African Americans also, of all ages.

OK then; to the play-by-play.

My intention was to get with the protestors outside early and then go into the stadium later in the morning, but the group I was looking for was nowhere in sight around 8 a.m., so I parked at the Holiday Inn due north of Reliant and ambled south across the vast asphalt expanse toward the giant dome. There's a VIP parking area to the immediate north of the arena, and as I walked past it headed for the south side gates I saw a bomb-sniffing dog and his handler sniffing out the cars there. I'm certain that detail isn't part of the normal stadium security even on an NFL Sunday, and I wondered who was paying for it. That was my first Tweet of the day.

As I came around to the south end there were ten or fifteen queues for bag checks and light patdowns, same as on game days. I lined up and took off my backpack for inspection, observing the stout little man in a grey polyester suit ahead of me as he was instructed to throw away his snacks -- a package of cinnamon rolls on a tin tray -- and his bottle of water. At his feet, under the table, were about 20 more abandoned water bottles.

I unzipped the compartments of my backpack, which contained sunblock, two frozen plastic bottles of water, some beef jerky, peanut butter crackers, a Luna bar, my diabetes and Meneire's meds, a notebook and some pens. I lifted it to the table and said, as the guard peeked in: "I have my Bible, my diabetes medication, a notebook, some pens ..."

He said, "you're good; go ahead". And so on I went.

As I made my way down to the floor there was a Christian rock band playing. A heavily U2-influenced one. Everything they played sounded like "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" to me. But let's be kind and say that Christian rock music and its associated production values have come a long, long way just in the past few years. (One favorite artist from my youth -- Mark Farner of Grand Funk -- saw the light and crossed over years ago, but I was never, ever into the Strypers and the Jars of Clay and the like. And those are old farts compared to Switchfoot and Five Iron Frenzy. Anyway ...)

Up in front of the stage they had cleared out some seating and created ... you guessed it, a Christian mosh pit. And some of the people coming out of there were white, middle-aged, and profusely sweaty. There was a little bit more than the predictable swaying and arm-waving going on. A little more, not a lot.

A prayer, a song, then a slow-dance version of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic'.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling down the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.

Glory glory hallelujah!
Glory glory hallelujah!
Glory glory hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

Everybody sing along!

Another band -- a folk instrumentalist dead-ringer for Glen Maxey (if Glen still had shoulder-length hair that was salt-and-pepper) and a soloist singing some old revival hymn, a prayer, another song, a truly great gospel choir of at least 60 African Americans, then an introduction of the co-sponsors by Richard Land: the Dobsons, Tony Perkins, the others ... 

Around ten o'clock Luis Cataldo, the director of The Response, came out and opened the show. He took complete control of the assembly, by this time at least ten and maybe fifteen thousand, with his opening remarks. Paraphrasing from my hastily scribbled notes ...

"This day is for one person. ONE man." (No, he was not referring to the governor of Texas.) "Today will be a day of fasting and prayer, a gathering unto God as the body of Christ to worship, repent, and pray for America. May Jesus' name be lifted above every other name today in Reliant Stadium."

So much for the fasting. For some. More on that in a moment. Cataldo likewise and deservedly praised the diversity of the assembly and went on:

"We will have a Spanish translator shortly, but she is stuck in traffic. Now when she arrives, you'll hear our speakers in English and her Spanish translation immediately following. It will sound a little confusing at first, but after awhile it won't bother you and then you won't even notice it. As you look around, you may see people doing something and you'll ask yourself: 'what are they doing? Why are they doing that? Should I be doing that?' Don't worry about that. Just worship and pray in your own way and don't be concerned with what others are doing."

"Some people are fasting and some are not, for whatever reason. Some people will be praying and singing out loud and some won't. Some will be raising their hands to God and some won't. When we break into small groups later to share our prayers with each other, if you don't have a prayer or can't think of one then say 'Amen', or 'ditto', or 'what he said'. We want you -- the Lord wants you -- to be a participant today, not a spectator. You are standing before God on behalf of America; He wants to hear your voice. But don't worry about what others are doing or how they are doing it. Give grace to God in your own way and allow everyone else the freedom to do the same."

I cannot emphasize this point enough: Cataldo took total control of the crowd. He confronted their biases and their anxiety, and asked -- no, instructed -- them to lay off that burden. And I think his directions mostly took hold, as well.

"We're not selling any merchandise here today. There's no offering being collected. There are no signs or banners, there's no one denomination authorizing or being featured by our guest speakers or musical groups.

"This day is to worship God in spirit and truth, to come together as a diverse body with sincerity, wholeheartedness, and repentance. We believe that America is in a state of crisis. Not just politically, financially or morally, but because we are a nation that has not honored God in our successes nor humbly called on Him in our struggles. According to the Bible, the answer to a nation in such crisis is to gather in humility and ask God to intervene.

"Today is a historic day of people from across the nation to pray and fast for America."

Or something like that. Thoughts of the highway to hell's pavement came to mind often.

The only time things got offensively political was when a stream of teenagers came forward and screamed out prayers for "God's intervention in stopping abortion in America". I wondered if their interpretation of  'God's intervention' includes clinic bombings and doctor assassinations. No, I really do wonder about that. Because I fear that it does.

Rick Perry was scheduled for 11:20 a.m. I left the arena floor around 10:45, my toxicity meter redlining, my phone battery waning and my back teeth floating. As I made my way out I stopped and talked to my fellow Demoncrat Erik Vidor, who was setting up his video camera in front of the soundboard. Knowing there would be plenty of opportunities later to see the Prophet's remarks, I headed up to the concourse, took a piss and then walked outside to find MY people. My Chosen Ones.

Where there was no one in place responding to The Response at 8 a.m. there were now around a couple of hundred, with signs and hats and costumes and songs and chants. There was a large group -- 60 to 75 -- at the front door, in the shade of the towering Reliant structure on the west side facing Kirby Drive at Murworth, and several more gatherings along Kirby all the way down toward 610, collecting under the shade of the small oaks there in numbers of a dozen or so each.

I joined the shady siders and stayed until about 12:30, retiring to break my own fast with a Satan Sandwich, a side socialism salad, and an independent progressive ale at the Sports Page, the bar inside the Holiday Inn, before returning home and streaming The Response's video while joining the Twitter feed. (#theresponse)

More coverage:

More photos from the Houston Chronicle

More photos of protestors from thanks_imjustlurking's Photobucket album

God's Response to Rick Perry

Kate Shellnutt's Believe It or Not live-blog of The Response

Rick Perry ain't whistlin' Dixie ... or is he? (YouTube)

Tens of thousands of Houstonians turn out for back-to-school help

A good seven miles from Gov. Rick Perry's much-anticipated prayer rally, an even larger crowd of Houstonians gathered in preparation for another sacred event: the first day of school.

Some families camped out for hours to gain admittance into Houston's first-ever, citywide back-to-school event at George R. Brown Convention Center, where free backpacks, school supplies, uniforms, haircut vouchers, immunizations and fresh produce were provided.

Others were turned away.

(The article originally contained crowd estimates of 100,000 but that has now been edited out.)

A bit more Response

The ADL's David Furlow presented "Roger Williams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Origins of Religious Freedom" at the Jewish Community Center here last Tuesday evening.



And one more, a classic scene from Blazing Saddles, that exemplifies everything the Christians assembling in Reliant tomorrow and their TeaBagger brethren represent.

Countdown to Prayerpalooza

The governor will give brief remarks, read scripture and offer a prayer in the middle of the seven-hour-long program, said Eric Bearse, spokesman for the event, called The Response.

Even the pandering is bigger in Texas.

Alice Patterson is the Texas state coordinator for The Response. And while The Response is explicitly a nonpartisan event, that hasn't kept Patterson from arguing that the Democratic Party is "an invisible network of evil." Hey, that could mean anything!

Controlled by demons! Demoncrats! It all makes sense now.

"They're intolerant, they're hateful, they're vile, they're spiteful," Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said of gay rights activists in April. "They're not the enemy. The enemy is simply using them as pawns. They are held captive by the enemy." Perkins, whose FRC was recently labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its anti-gay rhetoric, has been named as a co-chair of The Response and will speak at the event. Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association's issues director, has taken things even further:

So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn't the Germans, didn't the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual soldiers basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals.

All of which is false.

The AFA, which is co-sponsoring the event, recently launched a boycott of the popular Fox television program Glee because it is "glamorizing homosexual behavior."

But it's not just gay people and Democrats they hate; it's grizzly bears and killer whales and the Statue of Liberty and the Sun Goddess.

The recently emerging perception today, PrayerMania Eve, is that all of this attention being paid to Perry, his Response -- and particularly the vicious criticism he has endured -- is drawing legions of sympathetic Christians, previously turned off by the governor's public piety, to rise up and rally to his defense.

Yes, now the spin is that he's being persecuted for his religious beliefs, just like That Other Prophet, and he must be Saved.

I suppose if the Christian Soldiers rallying tomorrow in the football stadium can produce Perry to meet his critics face to face, then perhaps the cross, the nails, and the angry mob could be produced to give them what they want.

A martyr.