Touch and go scattershooting

-- Last night's mayoral forum turned into a cage match.  While Stephen Costello got the piñata treatment from pretty much everybody else, it was Chris Bell's cross-ex of Adrian Garcia that got my attention.

Bell inquired about when Garcia initially found out that a mentally ill inmate was being held in squalid conditions in the Harris County Jail, under his watch.

Garcia did not directly answer whether his former chief deputy had indeed told him about the case a year before it became public last fall, saying instead, "when I found out about this issue, I took action." 

Same old dodge.  Doesn't seem to be hurting him any yet.

-- Republicans are having such a terrible month that they had to play the "killing babies" card way too soon, and they used a James O'Keefe-styled, redacted, clandestine video to light the fire under their freak base.

(A)n eight-minute “undercover” video surfaced purporting to show Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services talking about selling the body parts of aborted human fetuses for the non-profit’s financial gain. Which would be shocking, certainly—if any of it were true.

Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Greg Abbott -- the latter taking a break from monitoring Operation Jade Helm, starting today -- have all weighed in with a "Kill Planned Parenthood" diatribe already.  It's a full-blown prairie fire on conservative media, but is barely a blip so far elsewhere.

Let's be candid: conservatives will not rest until Planned Parenthood goes the way of ACORN.  They hate women having birth control just as much as they do abortions.  Essentially, you broads are simply disallowed from having sex at all until you meet a nice Christian man and get married.

With 95% of women holding no regrets at all about their choice, I see another electoral demographic -- women -- ready to explode in Republicans' faces.  But hey, I thought Wendy Davis had sufficiently motivated that voting bloc in 2014, so I could still be wrong.

PP is at a real crossroads with this latest attack.  More from Amanda Marcotte.

-- Have you heard?  Donald Trump is "really rich", and he's going to prove it to you.

The celebrity businessman's campaign is expected to reveal details Wednesday of his fortune, which he estimated last month at nearly $9 billion when announcing his Republican presidential candidacy.

If accurate, that number would make Trump the wealthiest person to ever run for president, far surpassing previous magnates like Ross Perot, business heirs like Steve Forbes or private-equity investors like Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee.

"I have a Gucci store worth more than Romney," Trump told the Des Moines Register last month, referring to the fashion company's flagship store in New York's Trump Tower.

The GOP is now officially concerned about plutocracy.

Concerns are mounting among top donors and party elites that an influx of huge checks into the GOP primary will hurt the party’s chances of retaking the White House. Long-shot candidates propped up by super PACs and other big-money groups will be able to linger for months throwing damaging barbs at establishment favorites who offer a better chance of victory, the thinking goes. Already, big-money groups have raised about $86 million to support a handful of second- and third-tier candidates.

Poor them.

El Chapo vs. The Donald

The Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman -- known as 'El Chapo', and who escaped a second time from a maximum security facility in Mexico over the weekend -- is now tweeting threats at Donald Trump.

Sigue chingando y voy hacer que te tragues todas tus putas palabras pinche guero cagaleche @realDonaldTrump

— Joaquín Guzmán Loera (@ElChap0Guzman) July 12, 2015

Translated:

"Keep f***ing around and I'm gonna make you swallow your bitch words you f***ing whitey milks***tter (that's a homophobic slur)." 

Trump notified the FBI after that.

Even with all the money Trump has (though he's about $50 million poorer of late) and all of the conservative political power he's amassing -- certainly the Operation Jade Helm 15 observers would be willing to divert some of their crack troops to his security detail if Trump requested -- I'm not so sure I would bet against Shorty here.

Since I grew so tired of the Texas DPS officers and their expenses for keeping our former governor of Texas safe -- whatever has happened to his indictments, by the way? -- I doubt whether increased Secret Service platoons for political candidates who shoot their mouths off is something I, as a taxpayer, want to see increased.  We're still a few months away from having to make a decision about who gets protected, by the way.

If it comes down to a choice between Jeb Bush and Trump next March, I might just have to cross party lines and vote in the GOP primary (and not for Pee's dad, either).  There's a small chance my vote might be offset by all of the Republicans voting for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic one, thinking that beating a "soshulist" is going to be easy for any one of their clowns.  I am starting to have some doubts about that as well.

Bloom County returns

Thank goodness.  The thought of having to go through the 2016 election without Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, and "The Real" Stephen Colbert was making me feel depressed.

Click it to big it.

The Weekly Wrangle

On July 13, 1992, US Rep. Barbara Jordan gave a keynote address on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention.

(Jordan) was raised in Houston and attended Phillis Wheatley High School in the Fifth Ward. She had a gift for public speaking and was a champion debater in high school. She graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1959, and six years later she won a seat in the Texas Senate, becoming the first black woman to do so.

In 1972, she was elected as pro tempore by her peers, which meant she would serve as governor if both the governor and the lieutenant governor were out of state. On June 10, 1972, she was actually the governor of Texas.

After she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, she was known as an effective legislator. She gave the opening televised remarks demanding the impeachment of President Nixon and blew away constituents with her eloquent reasoning and influential speech.

And again, Barbara Jordan made history becoming the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Sadly, two years after she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in ’94, Jordan passed away after a long battle with leukemia.

 
The Texas Progressive Alliance doffs its collective hat to the legacy of a true progressive in bringing you the best lefty blog posts from last week.

Off the Kuff notes the first appearance of lawyers bound and determined to help a few recalcitrant county clerks deny marriage licenses to same sex couples in Texas.

Horwitz at Texpatriate says farewell as he enters the next chapter of his life.

Lightseeker at Texas Kaos exposes Rick Perry and Greg Abbott's myth that tort reform ensures more public access to affordable healthcare. In GOP Texas tort reform means insurance companies and corporations are the winners while real people pay the price. Abbott and Perry: Tort Reform as a Trojan Horse.

SocraticGadfly discusses the decline and fall of Walmart, especially in small towns and rural areas.

Should Sen. Bernie Sanders ultimately be eliminated from contention for the Democratic nomination, what's the best choice for progressives moving forward, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs asks.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants everyone to know that Jeb Bush's son is following the GOP anti-environment playbook in ploy to kill songbirds. The apple didn't fall too far from the tree.

Neil at All People Have Value posted a number of interesting pictures from his trip this past week to beautiful Cincinnati, Ohio. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

2012 saw the Republican Party lose the presidency once again, mostly because of their complete refusal to learn from their mistakes, and evolve. As we inch closer to 2016, Texas Leftist is left to wonder if the GOP learned anything from the last cycle. Given the dominance of media harlot Donald Trump, the answer is a likely "no".

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

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

Prairie Weather doesn't consider it very presidential that a former president took a large speaking fee from a disabled veterans' group.

Texas Election Law Blog celebrates its second birthday.

As their staff exits en masse, the Texas Observer asks: whither Battleground Texas.

Gilbert Garcia takes note of state Sen. Donna Campbell's Alamo histrionics that is fueling the World Heritage truther paranoia that the UN is taking over Texas' most sacred shrine.

Mike Tolson hears the echoes of Loving v. Virginia in the arguments made by same-sex marriage opponents.

Paradise in Hell counts down the last days of freedom in Bastrop until the inevitable Obama/UN takeover of Texas.

Charlotte Coyle confesses her reluctant patriotism.

jobsanger posits that Nikki Haley might be the GOP's antidote for Donald Trump.

Texas Clean Air Matters envisions Houston as a leader in zero-emission cargo transport technologies.

Better Texas Blog celebrates beautiful, messy democracy.

Grits for Breakfast analyzes Rick Perry's speech on race relations and criminal justice reform in the context of his time as governor.

Carol Morgan says it's time to stop asking (petitioning, calling) our lawmakers and to start making demands of them.

And Facist Dyke Motors has a short story entitled "Castle Katy and the Flying Buttresses".

Sunday Funnies