The MLK Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance pauses to recognize the life of Martin Luther King Jr. today as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff interviews Kim Ogg, candidate for Harris County District Attorney, and Steve Brown, candidate for Texas Railroad Commission.

Eye On Williamson observes that keeping immigrants in the shadows, because it's not good politics for the GOP in an election year, shows exactly what the GOP's priorities are: John Carter and the GOP's Misplaced Priorities.

Horwitz at Texpatriate reports on the controversy that has recently erupted in the US Senate Democratic primary between David Alameel and Maxey Scherr.

The civil war in the Harris County Republican Party threatens to disrupt the candidacy of Dan Patrick for lieutenant governor, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has a snapshot of the battlefield.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that those charter schools are using your money to push the propaganda to your children..

Harold Cook patiently debunks Republican claims about Wendy Davis' fundraising totals.

After reading a story about how China is paying for new shipping ports for Sri Lanka, Neil at All People Have Value wrote that when somebody else builds your port, you lose control of what ships arrive and what goods are received. It is better that we construct our own ports of friendship and imagination. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

Texas Leftist welcomes its first ever guest contributor... a remarkable man who has truly lived all sides of the marriage debate. In the span of a few short years, this father of three went from being married to his wife to marrying his husband. Fred-Allen Self has an interesting story to tell.

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

Better Texas Blog celebrates the 50th anniversary of LBJ's War on Poverty and reminds us that there is still much to be done about it.

Scott Braddock reports on a targeted worker misclassification crackdown going on in Texas.

The Texas Green Report wonders if the earthquakes in Azle will lead to a change in thinking, and in regulation, on fracking.

Juanita Jean notes that Texas is now exporting campaign finance law violators to other states.

The Republic of Austin shares an Austin-based ad campaign that is trying to convince people not to move to Austin.

The Heights Life has some good news about one school that's bucking the trend on library downsizing.

Texas Vox wants you to write a letter about Keystone XL.

Finally, the TPA warmly congratulates Eileen Smith of In The Pink Texas for the beautiful new addition to her family.

Sunday Funnies

HCRP civil war emperils Dan Patrick, and the real threat to GOP survival

Not surprised and not feeling bad for anybody.

Over the last couple weeks, it has become impossible to deny that a civil war has broken out in the largest county Republican Party in America – and the way this fight plays out in Houston before the March primary could have serious implications for the political aspirations of Sen. Dan Patrick in his bid to preside over the Texas Senate.

Patrick, a Houston radio host and lawmaker who has given up his Senate seat, said in his announcement for higher office that the support he enjoys in the Bayou City is key to his statewide strategy. Simply put: Patrick is banking on Harris County in a way that the other three candidates in the race are not. The problem with that now is that Republicans there will also have to make a fundamental choice about who will lead the local party. This year’s challenge to six-term incumbent and conservative flamethrower Jared Woodfill is objectively the most serious one he’s faced but, at the same time, he’s never one to be counted out until the voting is done.

That's all Scott Braddock and Harvey Kronberg are going to give you.  Update: Republican activist Burt Levine posted the full article to his Facebook timeline; you can read it here.  Absent a subscription to read their take, I'll provide mine.  And I won't bury the lede.

The local chapter of Republickins just cannot determine whether to shit or go blind.

When you have the county judge and a county commissioner in a proxy duel with $10,000 checks over who is the better conservative, and the election is still two months away... well, you just know there's going to be a gunfight at the Not-OK Corral.

But there's a bigger picture, and while the TXGOP will very probably rise or fall on the backs of the winners and losers of their squabbles, that's small potatoes at this point.  Really.

Forget the flying-colors sideshow that is Judge Denise Pratt, and yes, disregard -- for the moment -- that her scandal is widening to include the fresh new district attorney, Devon Anderson.  Ignore that Judge Pratt has lost the endorsement of Republican Yoda Gary Polland (who has made a lot of money in her court) because she has become a "political liability".  Overlook that nasty little squabble over a gay precinct chair; both sides have kissed and made up for the cameras.

Pass over the most recent lamentations of Big Jolly, even.

If these people are the best that we Harris County Republicans have going for us, perhaps it is time to walk away from the whole mess. Putting the issue of abortion on the same level as that of gay marriage reduces it to nothing more than the political wedge issue that Democrats have been saying it is for us.

Update: Lone Star Q notes the gay/antigay fault line shaking up the HCRP as well as Patrick's reaction to Annise Parker's wedding, which sounds just like some of the vile comments I linked here.

Harris County Republicans are slowly coming to terms with the fact that no matter who wins the fight for their chair, we all lose.  Everybody.  And yet... this is still just a distraction from the main event.  They are certainly the symptoms of a more serious condition, which is the creaking obsolescence and rapidly approaching extinction of the Reagan Republican party.  And it will demonstrate itself most clearly as an electoral liability when the Texas GOP selects its lieutenant governor nominee in March's primary.  That's right; LG, not governor.

Enough has been written about the quartet of conservative morons running for the post, including the spin attached to their fundraising.  Socratic Gadfly thinks that this contest will be the one where money makes the most difference, and I am inclined to agree just because of the difficulty in handicapping the race.  Polling suggests it will be Dewhurst and one other who emerges to run off in April, and again, who am I to disagree with polls?  (That's a joke.)

But if I had to bet today, I would put my money on Jerkin' Jerry Patterson, he of the bubble copter and boot pistol.  He's raised the smallest amount of money, but he's got the same statewide ballot name ID without the too-slick persona -- and freakishly large head -- of Todd Staples.  Patterson also has one the sneakiest persons ever managing his campaign, the former Safety for Dummies in Fort Bend County blogger, Chris Elam.

Patrick, for his part, is drawing criticism from the locals I overhear because of his *gasp* massive ego.  Staples is just too weird and incompetent even by the typical GOP standards.  It's still early enough, though, that all their warts could be washed away by the infusion of some of their millions of dollars into ubiquitous television advertisements, coming soon to a screen near you.

The two get reduced to one after the lightning round in late spring, and the lucky winner earns a trip to the fall classic in November, facing Leticia Van de Putte... and Libertarian Brandon de Hoyos, Green Chandra Courtney, and oddest of all, Maria Luisa Alvarado -- the 2006 Democratic nominee for lite guv -- running as an independent.  All those Latino/a surnames are surely going to diminish Sen. VDP's tally to some degree, an unfortunate circumstance for her prospects.

No matter what happens between now and then, the person sworn in on the South Steps in January 2015 gets to decide whether the state Senate will abandon its historical two-thirds rule, the last vestige of decorum in state politics (so says Kirk Watson, who lost the attorney generalship in 2002 to some dude in a wheelchair).  If it goes by the wayside, then the GOP will be poised to ram even more crap down every Texan's throat.

That's what's at stake, and these Harris County popcorn farts are just the undercard.

The real question is whether the sane people in the Lone Star State can toss a few cinder blocks to the dinosaurs in the quicksand, or whether the creatures will live to see one more presidential election cycle before they pass into history.  And that's an open question.

If you would like to see for yourself the four huge reptiles flailing about in the tar pit, the King Street Thugs are hosting them in Houston next week.  Be advised that security might not let you in if you're carrying an anvil.

I'm certain a concealed handgun is A-OK, though.

The end of the TMI era

It's here.  It probably passed us some time ago and we didn't notice.  Via Balloon Juice, this +1.

In the age of social media, when cell phones come with camera lenses optimized for selfies, that last question ("Is there such a thing as TMI on the Web?") gets asked regularly. So I am going to answer it, once and for all: No. There is no such thing as TMI on the Internet. We are living in a post-TMI age, and everyone needs to deal with it. Preferably by using the “unfollow” button.

There is such a thing as too much information for you. There is such a thing as information the speaker will later regret. But if an audience is willingly and pleasurably consuming the information, then by definition, that is the right amount of information for them. Assuming the information in question is yours to share — your life, your ideas, your stories, your pictures, your theories about elf genealogy in Lord of the Rings — you cannot share too much of it. There are no captive audiences on the Internet. Whereas discussing your sex life at the Thanksgiving dinner table may be TMI for Grandma, discussing your sex life online does not necessitate Grandma’s participation. If you follow someone on Twitter and you find that her tweets are too much for you, then you may unfollow her. If you continually recoil at TMI, it's because you lack the willpower to stop consuming (or foresight to avoid) the information in question. That’s your fault.

I spend far too much time reading the "letters to the editor" of the modern age, which include comments to stories in the digital newspaper, e-zine articles, blogs, and Facebook responses to the news of the day.  I want to know what people are thinking, and by 'people' I mean all walks of life and all persuasions.  I have a particular fascination with the conservative mindset, in a monkeys-flinging-their-poo kind of way.  And among the reasons I sample the vast public discourse -- particularly the discourse with which I disagree, not to mention the disagreeable -- is to perform a routine diagnostic on my own points of view.  Because too much agreeable opinion (as everyone who has dealt with someone who only watches Fox News clearly understands) tends to warp one's own beliefs.  That's how truth becomes truism, and in turns devolves into truthiness.  But back to what to do about stuff you see online if you don't like it.

Modern media consumption — particularly digital media consumption — is personalized. This is sometimes to our detriment; it is very easy to surround yourself with the voices of only those who agree with you. As consumers of social media, we are all the programmers of our own personal line-ups, featuring a hand-selected set of soap operas, news sources, and other amusements. If a particular soap opera becomes boring, you click “unfollow” — or maybe you hate it so much that you block it. You can download browser extensions that will turn words you do not want to see into a big black bars, or prevent you from loading web pages that contain material that offends. For instance, if I never want to see or think about Bill or Emma Keller, I could install a content filter like Blocksi and set it to block or limit the amount of time I spend on web pages where the term Keller appears. Or I could set it simply to warn me about incoming Kellers, so that I can summon a third party to preview the material for me.

You can take charge of that which offends you, if you are capable of managing the technology.  Or you can just scroll past it.

Rule 34 of the Internet states, “If something exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions.” Embedded in this joking wisdom is a profound statement about taste. If one person likes something enough to imagine, desire, or create it, then somewhere in this wide world of ours, another person feels the same way. In the age of micro-audience — when everyone is famous not for fifteen minutes, but to fifteen people — there is a consumer for everything. No exceptions. Even if the audience is merely the creator himself, gazing at his own selfies for hours on end like Narcissus falling into a pool of glowing computer screen — if he is @MrPimpGoodGame — that is still an acceptable use of the Internet. Embarrassing, perhaps. Awkward, alienating, depressing, enlightening, inspiring, boring — any emotional reaction is possible. But no self-expression on the Internet can be categorically too much, because to someone, that artifact of human existence is just right.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when this would have been funny, all the way through to #36, but after a decade-and-a half or so of Web-soaked narcissim and exibitionist behavior, now it's just pathetic after about the fourth one.  But the only real problem is that you looked at all of them and then felt bad after doing so.  (Incest has always existed; incest and Instagram is the new wrinkle.)  Next time -- and especially if you think it might bother you -- just don't look.

Back in the day before there was an Internet, we used to have a saying: if you don't like what's on TV, then change the channel or turn it off.  I would extend that today to include: if you object to gay marriage or abortion, then don't have one.

But please stop asking, "why is this news?"  Because that just makes you look ignorant.

Kudos to the happy couple

Annise Parker and Kathy Hubbard are now wife and wife.

(O)n the 23rd anniversary of the start of their lives together, Mayor Annise Parker and Kathy Hubbard got married in Palm Springs, California.

The marriage had been anticipated for several days, but it wasn't known exactly when it would happen.

Wayne had it first.  And let's move on past this also.

The mayor's office also explained that: "Ms. Hubbard has other insurance options available to her and will, therefore, not participate in the new policy granting city health insurance benefits to the spouses of legally-married city employees," which means they've avoided an attack by anyone saying Parker pushed for the change just so she could benefit from it. 

As Josh Marshall observes: when even Utah, Oklahoma, and the Supreme Court have ceded the moral high ground their legal objections... you know that Texas will make every effort to be dead last.  That's right; behind Alabama and Mississippi, despite what the immortal Nate Silver predicted last spring.

So say good night to Phil Robertson and Mike Huckabee and Greg Abbott and all of the losers who commented negatively here with their real names and their fake names, and everybody who lines up with them, and all the rest of the best of the worst conservatives in the world.  Congratulations to you all as well: you're as finished as is this latest chapter in American bigotry.

The proud Texans among your number might inquire of your elected representatives whether they will vote to decriminalize marijuana or pass casino gambling before they legalize marriage in the Great State.  You know, those sins you actually commit that aren't as high up your list.

And please let us know if they give you a straight answer.

Update: Houston Press' Hair Balls, with the six most pathetic objections to Mayor Parker's marriage (and gay marriage generally).