Tuesday, August 06, 2013

GOP fever shows no sign of breaking

-- Former chair of the Republican Party of Texas Cathie Adams:

Speaking with Christian radio host Rick Wiles last week in an exchange first captured by Right Wing Watch, Adams decried a biometric scanning proposal present in immigration reform legislation already passed by the Senate, claiming that it would give amnesty to people from Muslim countries who "are not here with the best intentions for America."

When Wiles decried a "biometric scanning" proposal present in the Senate's bill, Adams suggested that such a plan would manifest itself by giving "lost foreigners" the sort of "mark of the beast" cited in End Times prophecies.

"And, of course, we know in biblical prophecy that that is the End Times," Adams said of the initiative. "That is going to be the brand either on our foreheads or on the back of our hands. That is demonic through and through. That is End Times prophecy. There is no question about that."

-- House Minority Leader Eric Can'tor, challenged by no less than Fox New host Chris Wallace:

“You talk about creating jobs, you talk about growing the economy, but you have spent the last week in the House on passing your agenda, a series of bills called Stop Government Abuse,” Wallace said. “Is what you’ve been doing the best way to spend Congress’ time when you’re about to go on a recess for five full weeks?”

When Cantor tried to defend some of the laws the House had passed, including a measure to prevent “bureaucrats” from receiving bonuses, Wallace pressed him.

“Rightly or wrongly, none of these bills you’ve passed is going to become law,” Wallace said. “Your own members say they’re not going to pass the Senate, the president won’t sign them. Let’s talk reality. You haven’t passed the farm bill. You’ve only passed four of the twelve appropriations bills you’re supposed to pass. We face a government shutdown and a debt limit in the fall. Is this the best way to spend your time, passing bills that aren’t going to become law?”

“You’ve got the president out giving campaign speeches again, as if we’re in the middle of the election again,” Cantor objected.

“Tend to your own knitting,” Wallace replied. “You could pass a farm bill. You have the power of the purse! Only four of the twelve appropriation bills have even passed. Why not do what the House is supposed to do?”

When you have lost Fox, you've lost the country. More...

Cantor dodged the vacation question, because he is the one who designed the schedule. The 126-day 2013 House work schedule was his idea. Of course, he is not going to take responsibility for only leaving 9 legislative days out of two months to avoid a government shutdown. House Republicans want that confrontation. Even though the manufactured crisis strategy hasn’t worked for two years, they are going to go back to that well again.  

Wonkette always does it better.

“Why is Congress full of morons, Eric Cantor? Why does it suck so very very hard, Eric Cantor? Why is attempting to repeal Obamacare your go-to solution for just about every pressing problem facing the American people, Eric Cantor? Aren’t we heading for a major disaster because you guys are too busy playing grabass to actually get down to the work of real governance?”

Update: Even Politifact found its pants were on fire trying to fact-check (sic) Cantor's remarks.

-- Texas agriculture commissioner candidate Eric Opiela:

He says our Texas way of life is under attack. This land, Texas, is where he learned the value of hard work.

That Obama and his administration will stop at nothing to further their radical agenda. He doesn’t say what the radical agenda is.

But it’s why he’s running for Agriculture Commissioner. To fight the federal government.



Eric Opiela is concerned about future generations. Like his son Ryan. But apparently not his daughter.

It’s Eric Opiela’s Texas. It’s a man’s world.

Get used to that "Fightin' Obama" bullshit from every single Republican running for office, including Houston city council. It's all they have to run on.

Monday, August 05, 2013

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks that the Legislature is once, twice, three times a fiasco as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff has an update on BGTX and a few words about what else is needed to turn Texas blue.

Horwitz at Texpatriate notes that the Houston mayoral election has been heating up, criticizing both Annise Parker and Ben Hall in the process.

In a metro area that gained 1.2 million people in just 10 years, new stuff has got to be built somewhere, right? But as more and more neighborhoods wage futile turf wars with developers, Texas Leftist is seeing the signs that Houstonians might be ready for real zoning laws.

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw explains what Ted Cruz doesnot know or want to understand about Obamacare. Check out: Ted Cruz is Dead Wrong on Obamacare.

In redacted documents released as part of an FOI request, the FBI was aware of a plot involving snipers directed at the leaders of Occupy Houston in 2011. What isn't revealed in the post at PDiddie's Brains and Eggs is to whom the snipers were connected: law enforcement, or agents of those opposed to Occupy.

Whether it's through gerrymandered districts, impotent opposition, lack of citizen participation, or big money in elections, the far right of the Texas GOP runs our state. WCNews at Eye on Williamson says because of that Texas is on the road to nowhere.

===================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Christina Gorczynski explains why members of the LGBTQ community should care about reproductive rights.

Concerned Citizens would like for Sen. Wendy Davis to stay put and run for re-election in SD10.

Harold Cook just wants her not to run for Lt. Governor.

Texas Watch looks back at HB4 from 2003, "a sprawling piece of legislation that upended and undercut myriad aspects of the Texas civil justice system".

Equality Texas does not want the killer of Paul Broussard to get parole.

Nonsequiteuse ponders the deeper meaning of repro-socialism.

Jason Stanford would like for the Legislature to make like Marvin K. Mooney and please go now.

Sunday, August 04, 2013

2014: a year for female political candidates

And not just because of Hillary Clinton or even Wendy Davis. Here's an update on the Kentucky Senate contest, where Mitch McConnell is flailing. Charlie Cook:

In the wake of two polls that show the race between Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes within the margin of error, the race moves to the Toss Up column. Grimes was ahead of McConnell in both surveys; one was conducted by the Mellman Group for the Grimes campaign, and the other was taken by Public Policy Polling.

And from Grimes' Wiki page...

In 2010, Grimes announced her candidacy for the office of Secretary of State of Kentucky, left open by term-limited incumbent Republican Trey Grayson. When Grayson resigned to accept a position at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Governor Steve Beshear appointed Bowling Green Mayor Elaine Walker over Grimes to fill the rest of Grayson's term in office. Despite this, Grimes stayed in the race and defeated Walker by a double digit margin in the May primary.

She went on to face Republican businessman and former Senate candidate Bill Johnson. A main aspect of the campaign was Grimes' opposition to Johnson's proposal to require photo IDs in order to vote. Grimes argued this would take away voting rights from the homeless among others. She also became well known through commercials that showed her elderly grandmothers.

Grimes defeated Johnson with over 60% of the vote. She received a higher percentage of the vote than any other Kentucky statewide Democratic candidate during the 2011 elections and has received much speculation over her possible political future.

Keep in mind that 2010 was a red wave election cycle. Democrats got washed out all over the country (not just in Texas). Grimes' election to KySoS came a year later, when the Tea Party antics were just starting to be felt and understood. So she's good -- it took some sand to run for office as a Dem in a southern state in 2011 -- but she's also lucky. Timing being everything, Alison Grimes is certainly smart enough to put herself in the right place at the right time. That could very well hold true again in 2014. Here's a Politico article with more.

“The goal is not just (to keep it) close, the goal is to win,” Grimes told POLITICO.

And Grimes warned that she is “not going to be bullied” by McConnell’s tough campaign tactics, adding that she is prepared to fight the onslaught of GOP attacks attempting to link her to President Barack Obama, who is deeply unpopular in the Bluegrass State.

“I think the voters of Kentucky are tired of that play,” Grimes said, speaking on her campaign bus. “It seems as if Sen. McConnell wants to run against anyone but me, including the president, the Senate majority leader, leader (Nancy) Pelosi. And, unfortunately, I’m the one who filed my paperwork.”

That's exactly how every single Democrat running against a Republican running against Obama -- which is all of them -- ought to strike back. I'm just hoping Wendy Davis is watching Alison Grimes and her campaign closely.

FWIW, I am reading from KY Dems on another discussion board that they think the wealthy TeaBagger challenging McConnell in the GOP primary has a better chance of winning that Senate seat than does Grimes. That's the usual defeatist attitude we see so often from Texas Democrats. I think it's a dynamic still in play, as Texas Ds have just one candidate for statewide office at this posting.

Women elected to office in 2013 and 2014 are going to make the difference in the kind of state and nation we live in going forward. At least so that we don't have to read any more stories like this.

Update:

"If the doctors told Sen. McConnell he had a kidney stone, he would refuse to pass it."

By God, that's how you fight back.


Sunday Extended Length Funnies

"Okay, let’s just be honest now. The House is clearly where things go to die. It's where parents are going to start telling their kids their aging pets went. 'Oh, Fluffy's fine, darling. She just got stuck in committee.'"
-- John Oliver


"Sunday, on his way home from Brazil, Pope Francis said it was not his job to judge gays. He said that's what the Tony Awards are for."
-- Jay Leno

"Anthony Weiner's campaign manager quit. He says he's applying for a much less stressful job that has a better chance of success. He's trying to get Paula Deen elected president of BET."
-- Craig Ferguson


"Some jackass vandalized the Lincoln Memorial. Who hates the Lincoln Memorial? Democrats love it because it honors the man who freed the slaves. And Republicans love it because it just sits there and does nothing. If it could cry and chain smoke, it would be John Boehner."
-- Bill Maher

Saturday, August 03, 2013

Burying the lede

I was of the mind that one of the biggest reveals in the Texas Observer's piece on misogyny in the Lege was well down in the story, and sure enough the NCRM beat me to it.

Even the most powerful women in the Legislature experience it. When I started interviewing women lawmakers, they all—Republican and Democrat, House and Senate, rural and urban—said that being a woman in the statehouse is more difficult than being a man. Some told of senators ogling women on the Senate floor or watching porn on iPads and on state-owned computers, of legislators hitting on female staffers or using them to help them meet women, and of hundreds of little comments in public and private that women had to brush off to go about their day. Some said they often felt marginalized and not listened to—that the sexism in the Legislature made their jobs harder and, at times, produced public policy hostile to women.

Of all of the various actions that can get a person's employment in the private sector terminated, surfing porn at work is pretty much at the top of the list. It doesn't require eyewitness testimony; there's no he said/she said BS, the offender can't say it never happened. When former Houston Metro chairman George Greanias went to Rentboy.com on his personal laptop late one night at the office, he was nailed for it. As bright a man as he was, he didn't understand the whole VPN login-IT audit trail thing.

All of the bad behavior described in that article is (should be) zero-tolerance, but a state employee or elected official using taxpayer-funded computers, servers, IPs, etc. for their personal sexual titillation ought to be grounds for immediate dismissal. No warnings, no waiting until the next election.

It's at least as serious as forging timestamps on roll call votes, but then again I don't see Attorney General Greg Abbott investigating that either.

A real good question for religious conservatives to ask the Three TeaBaggers running to replace Abbott in the AG office: "Do you support or oppose state legislators, staff, etc. using their computers and tablets to look at porn?"

Because at least one of them is bound to oppose it strongly enough to be willing to make an example of someone.

Update: A solid take on how to fix these problems from nonsequiteuse.

Friday, August 02, 2013

"Yeeeeeaah, if you could just finish up those..."


"... campaign finance reports, that'd be grrrreat."

-- How TPS CF reports should not be interpreted (paywall):

Democratic political consultant Mustafa Tameez said Hall might have to show more widespread support to drag Parker on stage repeatedly; Hall reported raising $2 million as of June 30, $1.7 million of that his own cash.

"Let's say Ben Hall comes out and he raises $2.2 million and he only puts in $200,000 of his own seed money," Tameez said. "Then Parker's more likely to have multiple debates with him because he has substantial support and she wants to clarify her positions. All challengers want to take it to the incumbent and point out one of the 10 things that are wrong with the city at no expense to themselves, and no incumbent would ever allow that."

Tameez -- considered one of the city's premier political advisors, certainly a heavy player in the local insiders' clique --  seems to be suggesting to Mayor Parker that she execute the Rick Perry 2010 strategy of avoiding debates. Would that really be the best thing for her to do?

Update: Not to be outdone, Campos tops that for stupid.

Commentary doesn’t want to hear the other candidates in a debate and I’m thinking most folks don’t either.  I’m betting The Mayor’s Campaign didn’t do a whole lot of opposition research on the other folks like they did on Hall so don’t throw in that the other candidates have to participate.  Plus they haven’t staffed up and they haven’t plunked down a couple of mil of their own dough into the race.

Commentary is, as usual, a fucking moron. If there is anybody left in this town taking anything he says seriously, then they deserve what they get.

-- How CF reports should be interpreted (and then used by a political campaign):

Leave it to a college paper to scoop the bloggers on this , but it is definitely worth a read. Many of my fellow bloggers, me included, posted fundraising totals from candidates, including those in the running for District I. I had noticed a few individual snarks on Facebook toward some of the candidate totals, but nothing newsworthy or in a press release from other candidates. The college paper, The Venture, found something.

“As you can see from the finance reports, Mr. Mendez has a number of overvalued in-kind donations, lots of self-funding and he only has $12,000 cash on hand. To that end, alarm bells are ringing throughout District I because it appears he burned through the cash he allegedly raised. The hard working men and women of District I don’t spend money like that,” said Robert Gallegos, who is one of the candidates running against Mendez in District I.

Mendez’s campaign manager, Joaquin Martinez, did not provide a response for this story before deadline.

Looks like a well-worded direct hit by Gallegos on that one, stating that fundraising will not make the difference, rather, experience in the district will -- a theme on which he is running.

Precisely right.

So, to summarize (and despite how this post may have been interpreted): there's not anything inherently wrong with the reporting of campaign fundraising and spending; there is something wrong with how it is analyzed, and who is doing the analyzing.

Agendas coming out to play and all that.

Thursday, August 01, 2013

FBI knew about snipers aimed at Occupy Houston

But snipers affiliated with whom? Do you feel safer now?

As the Occupy Houston movement gained steam in 2011, the FBI was aware of a plan to use snipers to take out leaders of the movement, according to FBI documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The highly redacted documents do not point to any FBI involvement in the plan. Agency spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap said that it's premature to draw conclusions about the documents because the publicly released information is incomplete.

The documents do raise questions about how much the FBI knew about the plot, said Houston attorney Paul Kennedy, who represented several of the Occupy protesters in misdemeanor cases.

In an email Wednesday, Dunlap said the agency investigates hundreds of such threats, and "rest assured if the FBI was aware of credible and specific information involving a murder plot, law enforcement would have responded with appropriate action."

Dunlap stated the documents "were redacted in several places pursuant to privacy laws that govern the release of such information." She cautioned against "drawing conclusions from FOIA documents, as they often contain raw data and are incomplete."

Kennedy obtained a copy of the FBI document, which was requested in December 2012 by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, and has posted it on his blog.

You may recall that I spent some activist time down at City Hall at the birthing of Occupy Houston. From Kennedy's post...

Just how scared of the Occupy movement was the government? Or, maybe the question should be just how scared were business leaders and their lackeys in the government? The Occupy protests were a mass movement that had the potential to catch fire. That they didn't is due to the government's crackdowns and, I would argue, on the lack of a cohesive message from the movement.

The more important question is, obviously, who was behind the alleged plot to assassinate Occupy leaders in Houston? Why did the government redact any identification information about whose plot it was? Is that information redacted because it would expose confidential sources, or is it redacted because the FBI was behind the alleged plot?

The historical comparisons to Occupy mirror those of the 1932 Bonus Army, among others such as the March on Washington, which was held 50 years ago this month.

I have missed any reference to snipers and Tea Party protests over the past five years. Can anyone fill me in as to whether there were any stories about that? A cursory Google search was not helpful. I do recall seeing some guns being schlepped around by those folks at their rallies, and I think they did complain about IRS audits. Or something.

The thing that authority fears most is organic, civil, peaceful protest, witnessed again as recently as two weeks ago when Houstonians who objected to the whitewash -- a savagely appropriate word in this context -- of Trayvon Martin's murder wound up blocking traffic on a Houston freeway. (Read Mayor Parker's reaction to that here, and an account of the follow-up visit by activists with the US Attorney who offices locally here.)

If you haven't watched the Chris Hedges video I posted last week, now would be a good time to do so. His analysis of the government's intentions with respect to Occupy are spot on.

And then you might ask yourself if a discussion about the number of debates in the Houston mayoral contest, or how much money what's-his-or-her-name has raised for a city council bid, is the best conversation we can be having about politics in the nation's fourth largest city.

Update: This news about sharpshooters in Texas arrives on a grim anniversary.