Wendy Davis is TPA's 'Texan of the Year'

Big surprise, eh?

The Texas Progressive Alliance, the nation's largest state-based association of online and netroots activists, today named State Senator Wendy Davis recipient of its Texan of the Year Award for 2013.

"Senator Davis' actions this year made her a clear choice. Our vote was unanimous," said Vince Leibowitz, Chair of the Alliance. Leibowitz said Senator Davis' June filibuster of Senate Bill 5 on behalf of Texas women and the preservation of reproductive rights was a courageous action that served to galvanize and energize Texas Democrats. "Senator Davis' courage to stand up and block this outrageous legislation helped raise awareness in Texas of the assault on a woman's right to choose that our legislature has waged for the last decade, as well as the extraordinary measures right-wing Republicans in Texas will take both to trample the rights of women and their own colleagues in government," Leibowitz continued.

Not only did Davis' actions draw national attention to Texas, but her filibuster and subsequent campaign for Texas Governor have galvanized Texas Democrats. "We have not seen this kind of excitement for a non-presidential election in Texas in many years. We see Democrats are energized, organized, and ready to take back our state for the people. To a great extend, we have Senator Davis and her courageous actions to thank for this; she served as a unifying figure for our party to rally around, and her actions will both strenghthen the party in the long run and serve to expand our base," said Charles Kuffner, Vice Chair of the Alliance.

Previous Texan of the Year recipients are: Carolyn Boyle of Texas Parent PAC (2006); Texas House Democratic Leaders State Reps. Jim Dunnam, Garnet F. Coleman, and Pete Gallego (2007); the Harris County Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign (2008); Houston Mayor Annise Parker (2009); Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns (2010); and the protesters of the Tar Sands Blockade (2012). There was no award given in 2011.

We also had to briefly consider a non-Texan named Cruz, who got somewhat more than 15 minutes' worth of fame out of reading Green Eggs and Ham during a filibuster of his own... but humbly chose to give all the glory to God President Obama instead.

So Ted's the biggest loser.  Again.

Honorable mentions for Texan of the Year have to include Leticia Van de Putte for her own significant role in Davis' filibuster; Sarah Slamen, aka @VictorianPrude, who burst on the national scene just prior to LVDP and Davis doing so; Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood; Annise Parker (as previously mentioned, the TOY winner in 2009); and Beyonce' (yes, Beyonce').

There's a clear trend with these selections, just in case you're not seeing it -- in which case, and to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a Republican.  I saw a great button the other day, and it said: "Women brought every single politician into this world... and they can take them out."

Here comes the future.

Picking your ducks, and picking your battles

There's not too many country-ass expressions I'm unfamiliar with, but recently I had to ask myself WTF does "pick your ducks" mean.  And I found the answer.

Before (Phil) Robertson issued these disgusting immoral words, I knew what 'picking ducks' meant. My Mama had told me a story that illustrated what a nasty task this was.

Chickens, ducks, and other birds have to be picked of their feathers before they are eaten. This is not an easy task. I have picked chickens and that's enough for me. The big feathers you see are the easy part. The real work begins when you remove the pin feathers. They are the tiny new feathers just breaking through the skin. You can torch them with a brûlée torch, use hot wax, or just pull them out with pliers one by one.

Ducks are especially hard to pluck because of the number of pin feathers. Once the larger feathers are removed, the duck is basically covered with down. Those are the pin feathers you have to get rid of. They are endless. The story my Mama told me involved a lot of these elements.

The first thing you need to realize when reading this is that my Grandmama didn't cuss. She wasn't a goody-two-shoes, but cussing was just not in her repertoire. I never heard her cuss and none of the relatives I grew up with had either. That made it all the more remarkable when she did.

One summer, my Mama, her sister, and my Grandmama were on the back stoop of the house picking chickens. Of course they gossiped the entire time and it was not such an unpleasant task. They had finished picking the chickens, and were beginning to clean up the area.

My uncle appeared at this moment and dumped 6 ducks he had killed on the back stoop. The three women just looked at a pile of hours that had been added to their day.

This is when my Grandmama uttered her immortal words. She looked at that pile of ducks for a looooong time. Then she said "I'll be shot with shit and killed for stinking." The other women were now in complete shock after hearing her speak.

So 'picking ducks' was a bad enough task that my Grandmama cussed about it. That's what Robertson meant. Marry the girls young before they realize what a nasty task it is. They'll be more pliable about doing it and a lot of other things.

Since Robertson has added 'pedophile' to his resume' alongside 'racist' and 'homophobe', it's safe to say that this culture war is on for 2014.  So with that, let's all get ready to welcome the Fucked-Up Dynasty crew to Houston this spring.

Stars from the hit A&E reality television show "Duck Dynasty" are coming to the Bayou City in March.

Northland Christian School is bringing the famous family to Houston for a special event called "Dynasty Forever." It will be hosted at Champion Forest Baptist Church.

The main event will feature testimonies from Willie and Alan Robertson. They will be joined by Willie’s wife Korie, their teenagers Sadie and John Luke, and Alan’s wife, Lisa. All six family members will take part in a Q&A session led by event emcee Mark Lanier of the Lanier Law Firm.

The event is scheduled for March 22.

I picked this off of Ray Hill's Facebook feed, and he has some choice words for those who may or may not be planning a protest... that will surely gain momentum now.  Hill also has a piece in the Chron with greater elaboration (link to come).

I hope HPD's equestrian brigade gets plenty of rest before spring break.

Why a 2013 Houston mayoral candidate is running for a West Texas Congressional seat in 2014

After I posted the list of Texas Green Party candidates running for office next year, I had a query from Charles in the comments here -- and saw this post of Ted's -- questioning the rationale of former Houston mayoral candidate Don Cook running for US Representative in CD-13, a west Texas district that includes Lubbock and Amarillo.  I reached out to Cook and received the following reply from him (with minor edits for style and brevity)...

1) The narrow political agenda:  As always, I want to promote the party that is out to save, or at least help maximally, humanity.  What this means to me, from where I am in Texas, is maximizing the GP's electoral presence in Texas.  I intend to mainly help other candidates, but since we have ballot access in Texas I wanted to add one more candidacy to the list.  Seeing that all our stay-on-the-ballot bases were otherwise covered, but fearing (without cause it turns out) that we might actually fall short of our record breaking numbers in the previous cycle of county, state, and federal elections, I was looking for the right office for me.

2) The personal comfort zone:  I found the mayoral race in Houston this year rather exhausting, financially expensive, and humbling -- not to mention the stress on my family life -- for the miniscule (which is to say virtually nonexistent) rewards.  Monetary obligations at this point are not great, but they are still not totally resolved.  I wanted a low maintenance race.  If you are just going to be a name on a ballot, nothing is more low maintenance than a Congressional race.  One doesn't have to live in the district to run; one must only relocate if one wins, so one can file for any Congressional seat in the state.  You don't have to file any campaign finance reports until you raise over $5,000, and I don't plan on raising any money.

3) Why District 13?

a. I won't say 13 is a lucky number for me -- earlier this month, on Friday the 13th, I fell off a treadmill and knocked a cap off one of my front teeth -- but the superstitious part of me seems to expect and enjoy challenge from the number.

b. Wikipedia described CD-13 as the most conservative congressional district in Texas.  It occurred to me that the Dems might not have a candidate, and that maybe I could get a boost from being the only liberal-progressive-radical on the ballot in that race.  Unfortunately there is a Democrat running.  So it goes.  If some other Green had wanted that race, I would have as gladly sought another.

4) Advantages of District 13:

a. No other Greens were running for it

b. It is in a part of Texas where the GP is thin.  Voters in those counties will see one more GP candidate on the ballot than they would have had I not declared.

c. It is too far away for me to consider door-to-door campaigning or expect any debate invitations.

d. I and others are considering comedy and other performance material to promote the GP in the coming year, and this could be a source of material. "Hi, I'm Don Cook and I'm the Green Party candidate for Texas Congressional District 13, in northwest Texas because it turns out you don't have to live in a congressional district to be elected to represent it..."

e. I can make the case that since you don't even have to live in the district you represent when you run for Congress, we should go a step further: eliminating all Congressional districts and, using a single transferable vote in the multi-seat or proportional representation model, allow all the voters across the state to vote for all 36 seats.  (Winners only need 1/36th of the vote plus one vote to win!)

5) If my fellow Greens are appalled by my action, they have only to vote for "None of the above" rather than me at the nominating convention, and I will not get the party nomination.

Many Democrats and Republicans over the years have run for Congress while living outside the boundaries of the district which they chose to seek... though typically they do so in districts closer together than those which represent Houston and Amarillo/Lubbock.  Here's just one recent example (click to enlarge).

The "carpet-bagger" argument against this sort of thing is only slightly less effective in election seasons following redistricting, especially in 2012, when district maps underwent several court challenges and revisions.  The final result so confused Mr. Cargas (above) that he advocated for the Texas Medical Center -- in neither CD-7 where he was running nor CD-2 where he resides, but CD-9 -- in his meeting with the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle, a comedy-of-errors circumstance I detailed in this post.

But I'll stop making a piñata of Cargas for now -- he will present plenty of opportunities to do so later on, after all --  and wait for the inevitable tsk-tsking of Cook's filing from others, mostly in the blogosphere, to apend here later.

I can appreciate the case Cook makes: that it is absurd not to require someone running for Congress to live in the district they seek to represent.  It goes without saying that Cook is an unconventional candidate running for office in a political party that gets mostly overlooked by mainstream media outlets across the state.  If all that is left for him to do in order to call attention to himself is things like bridge blogging and skits, then he seems well-seasoned to endure the ridicule of the conventional "wisdom".

God forbid the corporate media write anything about Green Party candidates or races; the Texas Tribune (yes, corporate media) still hasn't updated their brackets with all of the Greens' statewide candidates.

So anything beyond the historical response -- ignoring alternative parties, races, and candidates, in other words -- probably qualifies as progress.