Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Clintonites draw the long knives

They've had enough of all this Sanders surging, and they're not going to take it any more.  From good old Ted's (he likes Bernie, don't forget) Facebook page, Tommy Christopher at The Daily Banter goes off his medication.

After a long summer spent feuding with #BlackLivesMatter and alienating Obama coalition voters, Senator Bernie Sanders appeared to be going in the right direction with black voters. He released a pretty decent racial justice platform, stopped telling people how his 1960s-era activism gave him a lifetime hood pass, and hasn’t openly pined for white voters in months. None of this appears to have translated in the polls, though, as Sanders’ support remains overwhelmingly white, so Bernie made some moves this week. 
First, he decided that drafting Dr. Cornel West as his most prominent black surrogate would somehow be a good idea, which would have worked if Sanders had a flux capacitor and a DeLorean set to 2007. Here in the present, Cornel West  is about as appealing to black voters as a Rand Paul lectureon black party identification. West has been among the most unhinged of Obama critics.

That's probably enough horse shit for anybody to have to consume for the rest of the week.  Christopher used to write for Mediaite, and links to himself nine times in those two paragraphs above.  Click on over to the original and you can quickly get the gist of what the Daily Banter and Christopher are all about by scrolling to the end of this frothing screed, and see what else they have been blogging about.

Whatever the Clintons are paying him, it ain't enough.

It's also pretty low-rent for one of her super PACs to have veered hard right in comparing Sanders to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (RIP) and the UK Labour Party's Jeremy Corbyn, or for center-right Democrats to infer Corbyn is an anti-Semite in a redefinition of the term 'guilt-by-association', and conflate all of this into the usual Clinton surrogate slime-stew they are so effective at pumping out.

But hey, that's politics, as they say.  Right now these little skirmishes are just geek fights on social media and out-of-the-way places online like The DB and Brains and Eggs.  In a couple of weeks you'll start to see more of it as these smears bubble up to the various 24-7 Trump Channels (and you know which lamestream media outlets I'm talking about).

To paraphrase the name of the rabid super PAC run by the odious David Brock above, let's Correct the Record.  Here's a more even-handed interpretation of Dr. West and his motivations.  If you'd like to better understand why Clinton's cronies are so hysterically desperate to slow Sanders' growing support among blacks, here you go.  And last, the Democratic establishment has capitulated, and now wants to wade into the same plutocracy pool the Republicans have been scuba-diving in for a couple of years now.

I wrote in June that Bernie Sanders wasn't going to get the Democratic nomination unless he started to attract minority support from Hillary Clinton.  And that is precisely what her goons are now trying to prevent.  The South Carolina primary will be the ultimate test, but between now and next February -- just five months away -- the battle will be won or lost.

We just get to wait and see what develops.

Update: More on this emerging phenomenon of coordinated strikes on the Sanders campaign from Balloon Juice and No More Mister Nice Blog.

Monday, September 14, 2015

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance knows that no one has a constitutional right to be a county clerk as it brings you this week's roundup.


Off the Kuff takes a look at the very high stakes of the voter ID appeal.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos, and contributing to Daily Kos, asks why the U.S. cannot have high speed rail that is common in Europe and Asia? Why? The do-nothing GOP, of course. Republican are why we can't have nice things.

Socratic Gadfly, linking to the first piece he has written for an in-depth philosophy and social sciences webzine, explores the parallels between Constitutional originalism and religious fundamentalism.

The best debate in the Houston mayoral contest happened last Thursday night, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs blogged about it.

Texas Leftist agrees with President Obama; the economic future of the United States may soon be inextricably linked to the world's next great power player. Here's why it's time for Texas to take a new look at Africa. Plus some coverage as the Houston Unites campaign kicks into high gear.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson understands that the Texas GOP has a problem with health care. They hate it and it shows: Common sense conservatism is bad for your health.

JohnCoby at Bay Area Houston took note of Ted Cruz locking up the coveted Kentucky hillbilly vote.  "Lock up."  Get it?

TXSharon at Bluedaze caught the Texas Railroad Commission sitting on the lap of a fracker.

Egberto Willies documents more of the slow-but-steady rise of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.

Neil at All People Have Value was glad to see local outreach by the Harris County Green Party on Labor Day. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

A rally in Dallas tonight for Donald Trump will be preceded by a "Dump the Trump" protest march through downtown during rush-hour, according to Trail Blazers.

Juanita Jean unloads on Houston mayoral candidate Ben Hall.

Grits for Breakfast calls out Dan Patrick for misleading and incendiary rhetoric about crime and the police.

The TSTA Blog rebuts a Wall Street Journal op-ed on the recent SCOTUS charter school ruling.

Prairie Weather uncovers how America became the land of gross inequality and the home of dangerous coverups.

Steve Bates marvels at the self-realization of some Republicans that another government shutdown -- this time over defunding Planned Parenthood -- might not benefit their general cause.

Carol Morgan would like to know how to pronounce "Mission Accomplished" in Arabic.

jobsanger caught the YouGov poll that said 43% of Republicans would be in favor of a military takeover of the US government.

Liz Goulding looks back on three years of being a one-car household.

The Bloggess celebrated World Suicide Prevention Day.

And Fascist Dyke Motors is waiting on Alex Trebek.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Adios, MoFo (with a dream sequence update)

Too easy a headline, considering the departed has been on life support for some time.

Rick Perry's political career ended with a whimper, a remarkable if predictable fall for the longest-serving governor in Texas history and a leader many considered the Republican Party's savior just four years ago.

History may judge it an end sealed back in 2011, when Perry froze on a debate stage and tried to recover with an embarrassed "oops." Others may remember the former governor with the movie-star looks and resume to match as Donald Trump's first political victim.

He left with a tinge of bitterness against the candidate with even more remarkable hair than his own.

In July Perry blasted Trump as a "cancer on conservatism (that) threatens to metastasize into a movement of mean-spirited politics." On Friday he offered another, more veiled, jab at the real estate mogul and star of wildly popular television show "The Apprentice."

"The conservative movement has always been about principles, not about personalities," Perry told the Missouri crowd.

"Our nominee should embody those principles. He or she must make the case for the cause of conservatism more than the cause of their own celebrity."

With $13 million remaining in his super PAC account, Governor Oops can still be a kingmaker of sorts.  Don't count on him crowning The Donald with any money.  The fellow who stands to benefit the most from Perry's second crap-out in four years is probably Ted Cruz.

Cruz feels that Perry's exit will make it easier to attract top Texas donors who hadn't otherwise contributed to the senator, because they didn't want to be seen as publicly choosing sides against Perry, the person said. It also may make the March 1 Texas primary "a lot cleaner," since Cruz will be the clear home-state choice.

At the moment, polling in Iowa shows Trump, Ben Carson, Cruz, and Carly Fiorina first through fourth.

Between the four of them, there’s about two-and-a-half years of experience in public office — all belonging to Cruz — and that experience largely consists of shouting and/or reading children’s books in an empty room while C-SPAN cameras whir softly.

We're gonna let you git on down the road, Goodhair.

Update:  I did not have time to include this in the post, but on Friday night I had a dream that involved me being at a party with Taylor Swift (she performed in Houston this past week) and a few hundred other of her closest friends.  It should be noted here that I am not a fan, don't have any of her music, don't know any of the words or even titles of her songs.

But there I was, sitting at the edge of a luxurious, resort-style swimming pool, legs in the water, eating a delicious stuffed croissant with crab and mushrooms and some kind of creamy alfredo sauce (essentially something I can never eat, as I am diabetic).  A waiter came by and I asked me if I would like to have a 'margarita shrimp cocktail', which he promptly set down beside me.  It was, as you might visualize, a frozen margarita with boiled shrimp lining the rim.  As I surveyed the delicacies I was eating and about to eat, I looked up, and from across the pool Taylor was waving at me.  I smiled and waved back, then noticed from the lower corner of my eye that someone in one of those floating chair things -- the kind with a cup holder in the armrest -- had paddled over to me and was extending his hand to shake.

It was Rick Perry, and he wanted to thank me for everything that I had blogged about his campaign through the years, how grateful he was for all the help, and blahblahblah....

Apparently that was too much cognitive dissonance for my conscious mind to endure, and it promptly shook my subconscious/unconscious by the figurative shoulders and I woke up.  Grinning.

(That's the best imitation of your style that I am capable of, Katy.)