Tom DeLay, Lawrence Meyers, and the Christian caliphate in Texas

Lots of things to do today -- blockwalking for the Wendy Davis campaign in my precinct again this morning, a Green statewide candidate fundraiser this evening.  Some things that I meant to blog, or blog more about...

-- Tom DeLay plans on returning to DC as a politician, but first he needs to sue the Travis County DA for corruption.  Such rich irony.

I wrote so much about El Cucaracho Grande in the early years of Brains.  That protest we had in front of the Hilton at the 2005 NRA convention was off the hook.  I even went down to Pasadena and stood in the sleet at 7 a.m. at an elementary school and pushed cards for Richard Morrison, who ran against him in 2004.  This post, one of the top ten most-clicked here -- it was search-engine optimized, as you can perhaps tell -- appears to have been the last thing I blogged on the topic (that wasn't about Dancing with the Stars).

I knew after the first appeals court white-washed his criminal record that he would skate.  The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals -- about which I have written more recently -- is nothing if not consistent.  And that court and its judges are, it should be emphasized, the actual problem in Texas with respect to the infestation of corrupt Republicans that pervades the state's body politic.  Tom DeLay -- and Greg Abbott and Rick Perry and Louie Gohmert and Sid Miller and all of the rest of the worst conservatives money can buy -- are just symptoms of that problem.

My Cuban in-laws used to say of Fidel Castro: "bicho malo nunca muerte".  A bad bug never dies.  Truer words were never spoken of either man.

-- The only Democrat on the Texas CCA, Lawrence Meyers (he was a Republican until recently), is suing Texas over the voter/photo ID law.  This news gives Texans who are not Republicans hope for a better, more just Texas.

-- But progress comes slowly, and often there is regression before progress can be resumed.

Women's clinics in Texas are closing, the burdens being created for Texas women to exercise their rights to choice are harsh and undue, and the worst is yet to come.  The next step will be the Texas Legislature passing a bill in 2015 that outlaws abortions in Texas, even in cases of rape or incest.  Governor Greg Abbott will sign it.  After that, the focus will shift to criminalizing the perpetrators of abortion.  Specifically, capital punishment.  This should not surprise anybody when it occurs.

Update: Think Progress gets it: The ultimate goal of the Texas abortion law (HB2, as it's called) is having the Supremes overturn Roe v. Wade.  As Charles reminds, elections have consequences.

And then they will go after the gays.  I expect the Legislature to try to void equal rights city ordinances like Houston's and San Antonio's with bills written next year.  We should see nothing less than legislation crafted by the people who wish for a Christian caliphate coming out of the Lege next session... that is, if they can elbow the corporate lawyers and lobbyists out of their way in the stampede up the Great Walk.  The rightest of the right will have a super-majority in Austin next year.  They can do whatever they like.  The only real fight will be between the Fundys and the Corporatists.

All of these developments suggest a bright economic future for barristers on both sides of the aisle.

Precisely.

"An Open Letter to My Democratic Spammer", by William Rivers Pitt.

Are you, by chance, feeling a bit ragged around the edges? On the verge of disaster? Perhaps even a bit doomed?

Me, too!

I can't imagine why...

...oh, wait. I know exactly why. I looked at my email this week.

"TRAGIC Conclusion," read one.

"Terrible News (JUST NOW)," read another.

"CANCEL NOTICE," read another.

"we. will. fail." read another.

And another, just like those. And another. And another. And another.

It wasn't the end of the world, as it turns out. It was, in fact, the master plan of some fundraiser fuzzwit for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who decided the thing to do is to scream manically into every email address available using panic-riddled headlines designed to make you click them open, because Jesus, what if?

"Terrible News (JUST NOW)." Oh, no, what happened? "CANCEL NOTICE." What didn't I pay for? "TRAGIC Conclusion." Oh God, who died?

Probably 300 emails like this in my in-box since the weekend, one after the other prophesying calamity...unless I gave $5 to the Democrats.

That's precisely my inbox as well.  I unsubscribe, they keep coming.  They've sold my e-address to so many different campaigns so many times it's ridiculous.

You want my money? Really? After decades of sucking up to Wall Street and the "defense" industry, you're telling me, over and over and over again, that you're hat-in-hand broke?

My ass. You have pornographically wealthy friends, and you bow and scrape to them every chance you get, to my detriment, and to the detriment of everyone I know, all of whom you've pestered for money.

As you send your hundreds of emails seeking cash for a party that is stacked from pillar to post with a Who's Who of Wall Street insiders, the rest of us scratch by as best we can in this catastrophe of an economy you most certainly helped to create, if only through your ongoing and ignominious cowardice. To be battered with begging emails about how oh-so broke you are is, frankly, a bridge too far. You have a job, email fiend, for now. Count your blessings.

Like me, Will Pitt -- whom I've known for almost the entire decade-plus I've blogged -- is mostly a Progressive Democrat, until the Democratic Party pushes him over the edge.  Which happens fairly regularly for me and apparently him, and particularly when they dump a daily avalanche of spam.  It's ten a day at minimum.  I suppose I should be glad that I get in a month what Pitts gets in a weekend -- 300 fundraising solicitation e-mails -- mostly going to the spam filter but then they change the sender's name and it sneaks past.  Begging, threatening, wheedling, cajoling, and yes, hints of suicidal desperation.

You know that 'motivating by fear' thing I've mentioned a few times?  This isn't how to do it.

Say what you will about the Republicans, but you cannot fault their tactics when it comes to winning. They are a minority in the United States, by the numbers, but they are running the show both politically and economically, and for one reason: they fire up their base. Sure, "firing up their base" means gay-bashing, and woman-hating, and Jesus-shouting, and war-mongering...but it works. In the fourteenth year of this brave new century, the party everyone hates and thinks is crazy, according to all the polls, is about to take over the Senate and increase its hold on the House.

It's not a magic trick, and it's not a mystery, why that is about to happen. The Republicans are acting like Republicans, and the people who support them will run through stone walls to vote for them. [...] If Democrats acted like Democrats, they might enjoy the same level of support from their own base...but instead, the people are presented with this eternally timid "Please Don't Hurt Me" coalition, afraid of the word "Liberal," and certainly addicted to the Wall Street/Defense/Petroleum money swelling their coffers. You ain't broke, despite that barrage of emails to the contrary.

Dead solid perfect.  Keep going, dude.

You support fracking while giving lip-service to climate change? You want Keystone XL approved, despite the fact that it will run the world's dirtiest fuel through our breadbasket and over our main aquifer in a pipeline that is dead-bang guaranteed to leak? You endorse the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement? You're satisfied with the barren lack of accounting meted to the Wall Street brigands who stole our future? You're down with a third war in Iraq?

Wait, you don't support all that? But you won't stand against it, because you're afraid of losing votes or campaign money?

My heroes.

There's a lot more, but Imma let him finish.

Come November, if the Democrats wind up flopping and flailing for an explanation as to why they got routed at the polls, let me offer a succinct reply: You stand for nothing. You are the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. Everyone expects you to go down to defeat, because you always lay down, because you are paid to do so.

It doesn't have to be that way, but that's the way it is. When the midterms eat you alive, remember what I said. When you stand for nothing, you get nothing in return.

Write me an email about that.

If some "my party right or wrong" Democrats give me some rationalizations for this -- i.e. that spamming their supporters is what's necessary to be competitive with the GOP -- I'm going to laugh out loud in their face.

Update: Ramona's Voices makes the same point.

They won't get mentioned very often in other media...

Here are four Texas Greens on your ballot next month -- or on your ballot that you've received in the mailbox already: Kenneth Kendrick (Texas Agriculture Commissioner), Deb Shafto (Texas Comptroller), David Collins (Harris County Judge), and Martina Salinas (Texas Railroad Commissioner). Video is courtesy of Greenwatch TV, a local public access program airing weekly in Houston and surrounding areas.


Four Green Party of Texas Candidates (GWTV, 2014/10/01) from Art Browning on Vimeo.

Your chance to meet Kendrick and Salinas -- if you live in or near Houston -- is this weekend; they will appear together at a joint campaign fundraiser.  Details are here.

Yes. Texas will outlaw abortions if Greg Abbott is elected.

Closing clinics on the basis of "women's health" is Orwellian, to be certain.  But it's only the beginning.  The next step after that for the pro-life faction is to prosecute women who have abortions on a charge of murder, and to exercise capital punishment upon conviction.  Don't act so shocked.

A writer for National Review, (Kevin D.) Williamson likes to be the guy who will brashly express the crudest (and sometimes cruelest) version of his own team's deepest ideological commitments. Want an up-is-down revisionist take on American history that portrays the Republican Party as a far greater champion of civil rights than the Democrats? Williamson's your man. Looking for someone to mock a transgendered person pictured on the cover of Time magazine? Williamson will do it with unapologetic relish.

But none of that compares to what we got from Williamson earlier this week, when he took to Twitter to declare that he thinks women who have had abortions deserve to be executed for their actions. And not just executed in any old way, or by lethal injection, which is the standard in the 32 states that permit the death penalty. No, Williamson thinks women who have had abortions — along with the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff involved in the procedure — deserve to face death by hanging.

Now, the hanging bit is an almost perfect example of intentionally provocative rhetoric. (That's my preferred euphemism for "trolling.") Note how it adds an extra frisson of outrageousness to the proposal of capital punishment, given the way hanging has historically been deployed — as a uniquely public form of execution, used by governments as well as extrajudicial gangs of private citizens to inspire acute fear and intimidation. (Williamson might have just gone ahead and advocated beheadings, though of course, as another National Review author has recently argued, only a "purely evil" political organization could favor anything like that.)

Don't. act. so. shocked.

(T)hose who oppose abortion rights claim that the procedure amounts to the infliction of lethal violence against an innocent human being. If they truly believe that, then of course they also believe it should be prosecuted and punished like any other act of homicide. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about the Williamson controversy may be that his remarks surprised anyone at all.

Did you ask your favorite Republican what they thought of Williamson's proposal?  Perhaps you should, especially if there are going be any more debates you observe among candidates, and especially if they give you the chance to offer a query.

Repealing abortion rights at the federal level would just be the first step. It would be followed by an effort to outlaw abortion on a state-by-state basis. Then those involved in the illegal procedure would have to be prosecuted and punished. At the outer fringes of the possible, anti-abortion activists hope to see a Personhood Amendment protecting fetal life added to the Constitution, or perhaps the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly expanded to include the unborn.

While Republican presidential candidates are regularly asked if they endorse their party's platform in favor of repealing Roe, they are only rarely confronted with a follow-up question about whether they also believe that women who procure abortions and the medical professionals who provide them should be prosecuted and punished for murder — perhaps even for capital murder.

Since one typically comes to favor outlawing abortion only because of a belief in its homicidal character, it's hard to see how an opponent of abortion rights could do anything other than affirm a desire to see the murderers and their accessories brought to justice. It seems the only alternative would be to look hopelessly soft on crime.

Republicans in Texas, with supermajorities in the Lege and an eager new governor in Greg Abbott, will be the first state in the nation to ban abortion, and they will dare anyone to turn them back.  They have all the votes they need: five, on the US Supreme Court.  And then they will go after the murderers, those dastardly criminal women who would break the law and kill their babies anyway.

This is not an exaggeration.

As a reminder, motivating your voting base by fear is something Republicans do exceptionally well and exponentially better than Democrats.  It's also a very pointed note to a small handful of Democrats who think voting for Greens is a bigger problem than Democrats who vote for Republicans (more than 300,000 of them who voted in Florida in 2000, for anyone who doesn't wish to click the link).  Or for that matter, Democratically-leaning semi-sorta-sometimes voters who mostly don't.

Thank goodness Battleground Texas is working so furiously on the latter.  The former is a more internal failure, and might be remedied with some soul-searching, or perhaps even a 2016 presidential candidate along the lines of Bernie Sanders.  That's a discussion for later... about one month from now.