The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks the dress is gold and white (but doesn't really care either way) and that the llamas should replace the Kardashians on TV as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff notes that Republican hostility to local control doesn't extend to the proposed high speed rail line, where a bill to give cities and counties a virtual veto over it has been filed.

Libby Shaw, writing for Texas Kaos and a contributing to Daily Kos, is not surprised by the Texas Republicans' cruel contempt for immigrant families and Obamacare. Abbott celebrates busting up immigrant families while John Cornyn licks his chops for a gutted Obamacare.

Stace at DosCentavos reports on the League of Women Voters-Houston's discussion on low voter turnout.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is appalled at the anti-citizen ignorance of the McAllen city commissioner candidate, Debbie Crane Aliseda, who equates early voting to voter fraud.  What's worse?  Other candidates echoed her ignorance.

A hot rumor about Adrian Garcia declaring for mayor of Houston turned out to be only that, but PDiddie at Brains and Eggs -- as someone really well-connected once said -- "ran the traps on everything". (A city council candidate did announce at that same breakfast meeting, for whatever that might be worth.)

From WCNews at Eye on Williamson: The Texas GOP gutted public education which caused a budget surplus. Instead of putting the money back they want to give it to the wealthy and big business: Doing Away With What They Believe Is Unnecessary.

Texas Leftist wonders if the nullification of opponents' signatures recalling the Plano ERO might be a precursor to Houston's case.

jobsanger underscores the lies conservative repeat about the poor.

Egberto Willies reported from the Texas Kossacks meetup in Austin this past weekend.

Neil at All People Have Value took a walk and looked up at the things above him. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

Texas Clean Air Matters reminds us that Texas is very good at energy efficiency and should do more of it, and Texas Vox calls for more support for solar energy from the Lege.

Better Texas Blog calculates the cost of cutting the business margins tax.

Socratic Gadfly exposes Austin for the not-quite-so-liberal bastion that it is.

Houston Matters airs their interview with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein today.

Prairie Weather reminds us that Congressional Republicans are about as dangerous to America as badly trained local police have shown themselves to be.

Juanita Jean has a good laugh over a kerfuffle involving male strippers at an antique show in Fayette County.

Nonsequiteuse would like Republicans to stay out of her bathroom.

Grits for Breakfast recounts how the DPS "border surge" caused an increase in crime elsewhere.

The TSTA Blog asks if anything will be left for Texas schools in the budget, while Raise Your Hand Texas comments on the filing of quality pre-K bills in the Legislature.

Randy Bear endorses Mike Villarreal for mayor of San Antonio, and The Quintessential Curmudgeon, taking over for the Panhandle Truth Squad, takes note of the city council races in Amarillo.  And the Lewisville Texan-Journal also reports on city council election happenings there.

Rick Perry: Scott Walker's a jerk

And when Rick Perry thinks you're a jerk, you're probably more of an a-hole.  And by that, he means a bigger a-hole than he is, Scott.

Saturday morning, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said that "the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime" was Ronald Reagan's aggressive response to an air traffic controllers strike in 1981. Forget Nixon's outreach to China, Reagan's defense buildup, or the Iraq war — it's all about the firing of about 11,000 federal employees.

Walker has made similar remarks about Reagan and the air traffic controllers before. But now, he is one of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination in 2016. And he is trying to convince party elites that he can be their guy. But instead of checking off the foreign policy box, this latest comment adds to a list of foreign policy screwups.

The context surrounding this quote is important. Walker had repeatedly asserted that the air traffic controllers strike was a critical foreign policy decision, arguing that it sent the Soviets a message that Reagan meant what he said. At one point, he cited Soviet documents to support his point — documents that, it turns out, were entirely made up. Reagan's own ambassador to the Soviet Union told Politifact back in January that Walker's interpretation of these events is "utter nonsense."

Earlier this week, Walker had gotten into hot water for saying that his fight with union at home prepared him for fighting ISIS abroad. "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world," Walker said. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, another 2016 hopeful and no squishy moderate, called Walker's comments "inappropriate."

Overlook his being a jerk or an a-hole or whatever.  Scott Walker is just too effing dumb -- even for a Republican -- to be president of the United States.  This time, it has nothing to do with him dropping out of college 34 hours short of an undergraduate degree.  It may take a few months for the GOP base to figure this out, however, so who might be the most stupid in this regard is an open question.

On the other hand, our formerly worst Texas governor ever (just since the current one) might not have learned his lesson four years ago about demonstrating empathy towards 'the enemy' publicly, and if you believe the so-called libertarians who vote in the CPAC poll, Oops doesn't have much ground left to lose.  So, as usual, I can't really determine which of these conservatives committed the bigger gaffe.

C'mon, debate season!

Update: It's not as if Governor Glasses was going to just let Scott Walker be the most ignorant person of the weekend, after all.

Following a weekend full of conservative attacks on Hillary Clinton at the Conservative Political Action Conference, former Texas Governor Rick Perry added to the list, questioning the former secretary of state’s “loyalty” in an interview that aired Sunday.

Responding to news that the Clinton foundation had not notified the State Department when it previously accepted a donation from a foreign nation, Perry argued that Clinton was disloyal.

“I think it falls flat in the face of the American people when it comes to, are you going to trust an individual who has taken that much money from a foreign source? Where’s your loyalty?” Perry said in an interview that aired on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

He winks and nods at Texas secessionists, he supported Cliven Bundy's armed insurrection, and he's questioning someone -- anyone -- else's "loyalty".  Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Sunday Funnies, Conservatives Behaving Badly edition

Bonus toon: "In Memoriam: Logic and Reason".

Hat-tip @TomTomorrow who notes that the toon (at the link above), from September of last year, won a silver medal from the Society of Illustrators on Thursday, the day before Leonard Nimoy passed away on Friday. "Seems somewhat bittersweet now," he added. "Wonder if @TheRealNimoy ever saw it."