The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks Alec Baldwin's hair does a pretty decent impersonation of our governor as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff discusses the latest Texas polling data and what a Rick Perry candidacy might mean for downballot Democrats.

On a night during which both Georgia and Texas put men to death, Letters From Texas visits the moral and practical implications.

Amy Price, the progressive running for Houston's city council at large #4 seat, had a great week of news coverage. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs collected the stories, audio, and video.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson shows how state Sen. Steve Ogden's retirement announcement this week has shaken up the county's politics: The changing election landscape in Williamson County, creating opportunities.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that Rick Perry is having a bad week. Boo hoo.

This week on Left of College Station Teddy asks how do you support reproductive rights? LoCS focuses on reproductive rights all this week as the anti-choice '40 Days for Life' protest begins

At McBlogger, we take a sniff around LCRA's decision to privatize some of their assets and don't like the smell.

Neil at Texas Liberal noted a new phone app that will show the amount of forced labor used in many of the everyday things that we buy.

Libby Shaw over at TexasKaos brings us up to date on Rick Perry's limelight moment. Called upon to demonstrate his cool under fire before a national audience at the last Republican debate, he showed his true mettle. He melted down. See all the details here: Rick Perry Bombs Presidential Debate.

Rick Perry clarifies debate snafus, and David Dewhurst as Chupacabra

Via Harold Cook's Letters from  Texas, our governor straightens out some of his mumbling, stumbling statements from last week's debate:



And from the World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Juanita Jean observes some intra-Republican abuse ...

Sunday Funnies, Class Warfare Edition

All about Amy *updates*

Charles Kuffner has posted his audio interview with the Houston City Council candidate of my preference, Amy Price, and she also interviewed this week with Greenwatch TV as well. That video will be linked here as soon as it is posted there. Update: Here it is.



From Kuff's written intro:

Price is a violin teacher and professional musician who has performed with such bands as Gordian Knot, The Buddhacrush, and Orange Is In. She’s also someone I’ve known and been friends with for over 20 years.

I will add that Amy plans on doing some of her LPC-Intern experience toward obtaining her LPC licensure at H.O.P.E. Psychotherapy of Houston, PLLC pending approval of the Texas State Board of Examiners of Professional Counselors, and is a member of the Houston Professional Musicians Association, Local 65-699 of the American Federation of Musicians.

Amy is, again, running in the At Large #4 contest, challenging incumbent Chief Crime Labford -- err, Councilman CO Bradford, along with Louis Molnar. I have previously documented the distinctions between the two men and Amy here.

If you think that municipal government should NOT be run of, by, for, or like a corporation -- if you think that city services like health inspections at your favorite restaurant and libraries that are open every day, or fixing potholes or collecting garbage or providing safe, clean drinking water should NOT be on a P&L statement -- then you have a very clear choice in AL#4, because Amy will NOT be 'business as usual' at City Hall.

And that's what scares her opponents the most.

Find Amy's website here, her blog here, on Facebook here and on Twitter here, and consider making a contribution to her campaign here.

Update II: From the comments at Kuffner's post ...

I am a fairly conservative Republican, so I attended the Heights area forum tonight to assess the candidates for this position and one other. I have heard hundreds of candidates over the years. This woman was the best informed, best prepared, most thoughtful candidate I have seen in many years.

She had thoughtful answers about job growth, neighborhood concerns, and the City’s dismal crime lab. The organizers of the event allowed Bradford to send a substitute, which is generally unheard of at a candidate forum.

I have never voted for a Green Party candidate for anything. There is no Republican running in this contest, and my thinking is that while I might not want a council dominated by Green Party activists, there should be a place at council table for a thoughtful, well-prepared young leader like this. I plan to recommend her to my neighbors. I am under no delusions about her chances against a well-funded incumbent, but it might do democracy good if he had a closer than normal contest.

Less kooky, more snarky

Whether because of his relative inexperience as a debater or due to a simple lack of serious debate preparation, Perry's attacks seemed to have the unintended affect of making Romney, who clearly has been practicing his debate routine, look good.

But it wasn't even Romney or Perry who had the best debate line of the night. It was newcomer Gary Johnson, who in his first debate appearance, offered a crowd-pleasing zinger about President Obama's handling of the economy.

"My next-door neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration," Johnson declared, prompting his GOP rivals and the audience to erupt in laughter. (It later came to light that Johnson had lifted the joke from conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.)

Rick Perry didn't receive a decent applause line until well into Thursday's night's pissing contest, and at times was jeered by the Orlando audience. My perception is that his Ponzi scheme nonesense is turning off voters, particularly the demographic that Florida is full of, and the recent polls seem to be bearing this out.

But my favorite line goes to Crazytown Bachmann, who when asked how much of every dollar should a taxpayer be allowed to keep, said "all of it". Um, then what exactly would you be able to govern, honey? Right. We get it.

Michele Bachmann, who seems to be getting less attention at the debates as her poll numbers fade, did try to gain momentum by repeating two of her previous attacks against Perry: His backing of an executive order in Texas that mandated the vaccination of young girls against HPV and his moderate stance on immigration.

But Bachmann's attacks offered Perry two of his strongest moments in the debate. In response to Bachmann's claims he was influenced on the HPV decision by campaign contributions, Perry looked into the camera and admitted he had been "lobbied" on HPV—by a young woman who had "stage four cervical cancer." ...

On immigration, Perry insisted nobody on the stage understands the subject as he does. Both Bachmann and Romney slammed Perry for backing legislation in Texas that allowed the children of illegal immigrants to attend state colleges and universities at the in-state tuition rates—a criticism Perry slammed as heartless.

"If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," Perry said, as some in the audience erupted in boos. "We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society. I think that's what Texans wanted to do."

Yes, booing. And that was likely before the Floridians in the audience got this news which the TexTrib broke yesterday...

Native-born Texans who were seeking employment likely lost out to competition from immigrants in recent years, according to a conservative think tank that advocates for limited migration to the country.

The data, compiled by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, may provide some low-hanging fruit for Gov. Rick Perry’s Republican opponents. Perry has been attacked from the right on immigration with his field of challengers alleging he’s been too soft on illegal immigrants in Texas. The study estimates that population benefited from Texas’ job growth the last four years more than citizens.

The center found that of the 279,000 jobs created in Texas since the second quarter of 2007, 225,000 — about 80 percent — went to legal and illegal immigrants. The center says that while “no estimate of illegal immigration is exact,” at least 40 percent of the job recipients were illegal immigrants.

“Of recently arrived working-age immigrants in the state, 113,000 are in the country illegally. The other half of the recently arrived immigrants (112,000) are legally in the country,” the reports says. “This means that in Texas — one of the few states that experienced job growth after 2007 — native-born workers benefited little from this growth.”

It should be noted here -- since the Texas Tribune did not -- that the Center for Immigration Studies is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA are all part of a network of restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John Tanton, the “puppeteer” of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist roots... CIS was conceived by Tanton and began life as a program of FAIR. CIS presents itself as a scholarly think tank that produces serious immigration studies meant to serve “the broad national interest.” But the reality is that CIS has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked, and it has frequently manipulated data to achieve the results it seeks." (emphasis theirs)

But that won't matter to people who boo gay soldiers.

Not unlike the past debate, the forum included a potentially ugly moment for the party. The presidential hopefuls took a question via YouTube from a openly gay soldier serving Iraq about the possibility of "don't ask, don't tell" being reinstated.

The question was posed to Rick Santorum, but before he answered, there were audible boos in the audience —- something he and other GOP candidates on stage didn't acknowledge.

Video here. The sad thing is that I almost expected it after the cheering of Rick Perry's record-breaking executions and letting uninsured people die, so I wasn't all that surprised to hear it.

The least worst of the three debates this month in terms of exposing the Grand Old Party of Hate, and also the least successful for Rick Perry's career advancement.

Progress?

Update: Related reading ...

FACT CHECK: Slippery assertions in GOP debate

The Not Quite Ready for Primetime Debate

Perry takes lumps for ‘soft’ position on illegal immigration in GOP debate

Perry met cancer victim ‘lobbyist’ after signing HPV order

Huntsman warns conservatives against purity tests