Tuesday, February 26, 2013

This Week in Texans of Infamy

-- I am still holding out on posting anything at length about this miserable POS. As previously mentioned, I am trying. real. hard, Ringo... to be the shepherd. Or at least to not feed the trolls.

This wad craves the attention he is getting and I just don't want to give him any.

-- And the same goes for this douchebag. Even Ed Emmett has figured out that he's a moron. And yet, he makes an appeal to logic. Which of the two is more stupid, really?

-- I'm not cutting Phil Gramm any slack, though. He is precisely...

... the Forrest Gump of financial calamity. Time and again, his face appears at key moments in history. Unlike Gump, Gramm is usually planting the seeds of future disaster whenever he pops up. 

From Gramm, to Kay Bailey, to the current occupant of that Senate seat. It sure will be a beautiful day when Texas Republican voters wake up and smell the coffee, won't it?

-- This is a fellow we should all get to know better: Edward Blum, the godfather of the legal challenges to the Voting Rights Act. As the Supreme Court begins to decide whether or not to eviscerate it, just remember that if Craig Washington's personal financial difficulties had been publicly disclosed a little sooner, Blum might have made it to Congress for a two-year term... just like Steve Stockman.

Why is the VRA still necessary, you wonder? Because this. And this.

-- I would like to be more encouraged about this development, but until Texas Democrats stop advancing online petitions and start registering Latino voters in their neighborhoods -- and then going back and driving them to the polls during early voting periods and on Election Day -- I will remain skeptimistic. Similar to Socratic Gadfly.

Update: Jeremy Bird understands the scope of the challenge.


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Paraphrasing from the interview above: "1.5 million citizen Latinos in Texas, 500,000 African Americans, and 200,000 Asian Americans are not registered to vote. In 2008, 54% of Latinos were registered to vote, but only 35% turned out..."

Monday, February 25, 2013

The Weekly Wrangle, expanded

The Texas Progressive Alliance remains unsequestered and without an Oscar as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff talks about what happens after SCOTUS rules on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

As the special election runoff in Senate District 6 lurched into its final days, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had a couple more posts on the sordid last-minute developments.

How we get Medicaid expanded in Texas makes no difference as long as it eventually gets done. That's why WCNews at Eye on Williamson says this about the Texas GOP: However they want to rationalize it is fine with me.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted a picture of an old VW van with a bunch of Republican bumper stickers. What kind of a lousy counterculture is that! Also, Neil continues to work on his new website that will feature a variety of creative efforts as well as a blog on the 2013 City of Houston elections.

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Snips from other Texas blogs...

Bluedaze previewed the tar sands pipeline presentation to be revealed at the National Summit to Stop the Frack Attack, in Dallas on March 2-3.

Burnt Orange Report covered the development of Beaumont's selection as America's Saddest City. Cue the sad trombone.

Dos Centavos reminded Texas legislators *cough*RickPerry*cough* that it is time to support the expansion of Medicaid.

Grits for Breakfast also had a legislative dispatch; 101 House members endorsed a bill that criminalizes taking or distributing photos taken via drone without a court order.

South Texas Chisme rejoiced in the fact that the Texas DPS can no longer shoot at people from helicopters for any old reason, and called for some respect for the remains of migrants who died while fleeing economic hardship.

Letters from Texas gathered the reactions to Rick Perry's California troll-baiting excursion.

And state Sen. Kelly Hancock got spanked by McBlogger for his craven pandering to State Farm.