Wednesday, November 13, 2013

"When Texas is purple, there will be no more Republican presidents"

That's Roger Simon -- not a liberal -- quoting an unnamed "immigration expert".  Everybody understands this premise; even Republicans.  A dominant vocal minority in that party, however, just don't seem to care.

Government shutdowns and Obamacare fits are a walk in the park compared to the damage they are doing to themselves.

Comprehensive immigration reform is the turning point for the Republican Party as we know it today -- actually about five or six years ago, B. P. (Before Palin).  Either they will split themselves in half -- Whigs and Nativists, let's call them -- or some sense will seep into the skulls of the rebels.  Don't count on the latter.

Read all of Simon, but the best is last.

The expert also said that if comprehensive immigration reform is dead in this Congress — and it looks like it could very well be — it could pass in an election year or even by a lame-duck Congress. Obama has said he will sign any bill that includes a path to citizenship for the 11 million.

This could be his (second-term) legacy and, ironically, the only hope the Republicans have to be more than a whites-only party, rowing against a demographic tide.

“If the Republicans decided to pass it,” Obama said Friday of immigration reform, “it would be to their political advantage to do it.”

The Republicans in the House could continue to hold out and hope for a Republican White House in 2016. But every election they delay immigration reform puts the White House further from their grasp.

Oh yeah, for a while longer the rural parts of Texas will keep the state hard red longer than almost anywhere else, along with a few other stubborn Southern pockets. The battle for the soul of the GOP was lost long ago (I'm pretty sure it died sometime during Ronald Reagan's era), but the two warring factions will keep fighting over the carcass a while longer. Whoever emerges victorious hasn't actually won much; half of a once-major party.  The other half limps away madder than hell.

Rest in pieces, I say.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Texas has the worst conservatives in the country, Part II

I don't want to make it a recurring series, but if they keep showing their asses like this...

-- Wendy Davis redefines 'pro-life', enrages anti-choicers.

This one is fairly simple.  If you're pro-guns (people die), pro-war (people die), pro-death penalty (people die for revenge), anti-welfare (poor children die), and anti-health care (people of all walks of life die slowly, but too soon)... then you're pro-death.

So hurry up and die already, you assholes.

-- Speaking of gun nuts...


(Last) Saturday, nearly 40 armed men, women, and children waited outside a Dallas - area restaurant to protest a membership meeting for the state chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun safety advocacy group formed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

According to a spokeswoman for Moms Demand Action (MDA), the moms were inside the Blue Mesa Grill when members of Open Carry Texas (OCT) — an open carry advocacy group — “pull[ed] up in the parking lot and start[ed] getting guns out of their trunks.” The group then waited in the parking lot for the four MDA members to come out. The spokeswoman said that the restaurant manager did not want to call 911, for fear of “inciting a riot” and waited for the gun advocates to leave. The group moved to a nearby Hooters after approximately two hours. 

Four women having lunch, with 40 lunatics ourtside -- some crouched in firing position -- and a restaurant manager scared so shitless that he won't call the cops.  And this...

"The group then moved to a nearby Hooters after approximately two hours."

Yep, that's a group of Texas Republicans, all right.

Update: This photo, taken at nearly the same moment from another angle, suggests that this group was posing for a picture and not preparing to fire on the restaurant.  It doesn't absolve these thugs from anything, IMO.

-- Texas school tosses 6th grader’s breakfast in trash after he can’t pay 30 cents for it:

A Texas school is standing by its policy after cafeteria workers threw a sixth grader’s breakfast in the trash when they realized his account was short 30 cents.

Jennifer Castilleja told KTRK that she offered to come to the school Wednesday morning and pay for the breakfast but Barber Middle School in Dickinson ISD refused to feed her 12-year-old unless it got the money first. As a part of the reduced meal program, Castilleja’s son pays only 30 cents for each breakfast, but his account had run out of money.

“My son called me and asked me if I could bring him some money because they took his breakfast from him and he needed money for breakfast,” she recalled.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m on my way, I’ll pay for it,’” Castilleja told the school. “And she said no, I would have to bring some money before he could have breakfast.”

“There were kids all around him. I think he may have been a little embarrassed and upset and, of course, hungry.”

Dickinson is a pathetic little town between Houston and Galveston, in case anybody was wondering.  Other fun things happen there, too.

-- White guy wins election after pretending to be black.  And not just any old nasty Republican bigot either, but Dave Wilson.

An electrician best known for mailing homophobic fliers to thousands of Houston voters attacking the city’s lesbian mayor narrowly won an election to the Houston Community College Board of Trustees after he misled voters into believing that he is African American. Dave Wilson defeated longtime incumbent Bruce Austin, who actually is black, in an overwhelmingly African American district.

Wilson’s campaign fliers were filled with black faces that he admits to simply pulling off of websites, along with captions such as “Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson.” Another flier announces that he was “Endorsed by Ron Wilson,” which is the name of an African American former state representative. Only by reading the fine print will voters discover that the “Ron Wilson” who actually endorsed Dave is his cousin. The cousin lives in Iowa.

I'll take the blame for this one.  I refused to blog about educational races in this cycle, and thus, Wilson got away with his scam.  I fully believe that this could have made up the 26-vote difference.

I'm probably a little too hopeful about the impact this blog is having, to say nothing about the intelligence of those Texans who manage to vote, and our democracy in general.  Taking responsibility is what Republicans want more people to do, however, and in this case a little naivete' feels better than the deep cynicism that would just be too easy to sink into.

-- Texans 'volunteer' to take women to their clinic appointments, take them to church instead.


Repeated for emphasis.

Please share this email far and wide among Christian groups. Cicada.collective.ntx@gmail.com
It's the email address being used by a group backed by Fund Texas Women and Lilith Fund looking for volunteers to shuttle TX women around for their abortion appointments. Consider volunteering yourself. I'm not suggeting you actually take a woman to an abortion clinic but it's a wonderful opportunity to minister to an abortion minded woman for an hour while you DON'T take her to her clinic. And hey if you can't change her mind by the time she gets out of your car and realizes she is at a church and not the clinic she's missed her appointment anyway

Is kidnapping -- a felony offense,  mind you -- really what Jesus would do? Really?!

-- Finally, what would a "worst Texas conservatives" post be without Greg Abbott.

With what has been described as the worst drought in recorded history punishing parts of Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott found a way to keep watering his yard without risking fines or incurring huge monthly bills: He drilled his own well.

Now his lawn is green, and there are no pesky city watering restrictions to worry about.
He is not alone. Abbott, the leading 2014 candidate for Texas governor, has joined an exclusive and growing list of Austin residents. That list includes Ben Crenshaw, the golfing legend, and Mack Brown, the University of Texas football coach — residents who are coping with the drought and rising water bills by procuring their own private water supply underneath their land.

But the trend is worrying city leaders and environmentalists, who fear that the rise in well drilling in rapidly growing Austin will negatively affect limited groundwater supplies, reduce the flow into rivers and discourage conservation.

“To me it’s just unconscionable. It’s a total disregard for the resource,” said Andrew Sansom, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. “What we should be doing is reducing our consumption of water.”

'Unconscionable' has been a word used to accurately describe Greg Abbott for a long time now.  But I like nosequiteuse's analogy better. 

Monday, November 11, 2013

The Veterans' Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance honors the service of America's veterans as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff analyzed the favorable poll and the unfavorable poll that came out last week.

Texpatriate, while happy that Mayor Annise Parker was re-elected, laments nonetheless that Ben Hall ran one of the worst campaigns in history against her.

Eye On Williamson is still blogging at our temporary home. What kind of message to Democrats need to run on in the Lone Star State? Good question; here are some thoughts on a Democratic message in Texas.

Two polls released last week had good and bad news for Wendy Davis, but it was when President Obama came to Dallas that things got both better and worse for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs broke it down.

People are getting poorer and poorer, just as Republicans and their backers wanted. No one knows poverty more than Brownsville and McAllen. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme says "Lets vow to elect Democrats in 2014".

With such anemic turnout, the 2013 elections were mostly a success. But some issues did still arise, and Texas Leftist was able to share a thorough account of one. If mass confusion is a goal of the Texas voter ID law, then I'd say it's working very well.

With Veterans' Day here, Neil at All People Have Value offered a brief account of views regarding war held by the late Korean War veteran Tony Aquino. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

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

Greg Wythe gives the unvarnished view of how the new voter ID law actually works in practice.

Grits for Breakfast calls for the implementation of the "Barney Fife Rule" in the McLennan County DA's office.

John Coby has some advice for future candidates.

Better Texas tells the rest of the story on those health insurance cancellations.

Juanita Jean is seeking help getting some non-binding referenda on the Democratic primary ballot.

And finally, this isn't a blog post, but a petition calling on Ted Cruz to give up his own federally subsidized health care plan, or work to support affordable healthcare coverage for all Americans.  It definitely deserves a place here.