Sunday Funnies, Not Debatable edition

Coming to you live

After years of faithful service, my Toshiba Satellite (running Vista, no less!) finally gave up the ghost.  So henceforth Brains will be coming at you with the latest Lenovo technology (4GB and 1 terabyte of memory with Windows 8.1 for awhile until I feel comfortable on it, then upgrading to 10).  While we get back up to posting speed, share with me your experiences running and playing on 8 and 10, please.

My first download is going to be my AdBlocker Plus.  How do you people tolerate all these obnoxious ads?

Fright Night went pie fight

If you read yesterday's predictive analysis, and then watched some of the proceedings (or better yet, followed it on Twitter) then you know things went pretty much according to script.

Trump got beat up.

But whether it was the rattled moment after Jeb Bush dinged him for trying to buy his way into the Florida casino business or when he sputtered through what was (without him) a thoughtful foreign policy discussion, the emperor of the Republican field certainly looked like he forgot his clothes on Wednesday. And that was before his crazy answer on vaccines and autism, or his utter vanquishing at the hands of Carly Fiorina, responding to his comment about her face. 

The other candidates, better polished and better prepared than last time, came across as people who know stuff. Their discussions about government shutdowns, foreign policy, and drug policy had, by the standards of these things, some degree of depth. 

And Trump was noticeably muted through all that.

Maybe his back was hurting from standing for three hours.

Speaking of Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO—so far the lone success story from the undercard debate—built on her success there and showed that her fight to get onto the main stage in the first place was worth it. She not only slayed Trump, she showed she could be the outsider to beat. 

Her answer about defunding Planned Parenthood got some of the loudest applause of the night—second only, perhaps, to her response to Jake Tapper’s question about Trump’s remarks on her appearance.

There's your winner winner, chicken dinner, folks.  She's gonna be movin' on up again.

Beyond that, this was a night of missed opportunities for Jeb Bush, another deer-in-the-headlights moment for Ben Carson, a weed meme, and the same old elephant in the room.  Oh, and Ted Cruz lied about Planned Parenthood again.

It's as entertaining as watching the Housewives of Beverly Hills until you realize one of these morons is going to be on the ballot in November 2016, and that millions of other morons are going to vote for him -- or her -- without a second thought.  Joke's over.

ABC's "9 moments that mattered" is only eight; throw out the one about Rubio.  And this is what 'post-debate spin' looks like.

Did anybody ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz when we're going to have some Democratic debates?  Why, yes they did, and she happens to be thrilled that the clamor for more is being drowned out by the Republicans' food fighting.  Now that's leadership.

Update: Fiorina's star turn -- though she was hideously wrong on climate change, and hyperbolic on Planned Parenthood -- isn't going to last, according to No More Mister Nice because she's not country enough.  That's a fair point, but I think she's got enough crazy going on that the Teabagger base can get along with her.  I still say she's going to fit well as a running mate for anybody except Donald Trump.  And more and better from Vox on all of this, with nearly no mention of Scott Walker or Chris Christie or Rand Paul or Marco Rubio.  That's precisely accurate.  Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham's tete-a-tete on immigration in the matinee got more play than Mike Huckabee.  That nails it as well.

Fight Night II

Or Fright Night, if you'd rather.

The Republican primary field looks very different today than it did nearly six weeks ago, when the first debate was held in Cleveland. Donald Trump has added to his lead, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina are starting to show momentum — and some of the others are in danger of joining Rick Perry in falling off the map. A lot is riding on how the top 11 candidates, and the four in the undercard forum, handle the questions from CNN’s moderators at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Here is a rundown on where the race stands and what each of the candidates needs to do to stay competitive.

-- Trump is coming off back-to-back days of massive rallies, in Dallas and in Los Angeles. He spoke to roughly 15,000 people Monday inside the American Airlines Center, home of the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars, and on Tuesday he held a rally aboard the 887-foot-long USS Iowa, a decommissioned battleship in the port of Los Angeles. He continues a steady rise in the polls, although his velocity has decreased somewhat. The question is, does this debate mark the beginning of a downward trend for Trump, or can he actually keep gaining in popularity? He’s led the pack now for almost two months, going from the mid-single digits in early July to the clear frontrunner, at 22 percent, in the space of a few weeks. He’s now at 30 percent, but his negatives are very high with a significant number of voters. Political observers have gone through different stages in their reactions to Trump. First came amusement, then mockery, and we have now been in the mild to moderate alarm phase for a few weeks. What happens with Trump on Wednesday night and in the following days will determine whether the GOP establishment goes into action and does what it can to derail and take down the demagogic anti-politician.

Trump is starting to lose women, which is the first data point that his act is finally getting tired.  (But so is Hillary Clinton, a more shocking turn of events.)

-- Carson is arguably the story of the last month, even if he has been overshadowed in the press by Trump’s “perpetual attention machine.” Carson has come from the middle of the pack to now a clear second place, at around 18 percent. And that’s despite a performance at the first debate that most political experts thought was forgettable and unimpressive. But clearly Carson’s lack of experience and absence of establishment connections has benefited him. Now, however, the soft-spoken retired surgeon is becoming a target. He and Trump have sparred recently. And he’ll be under a much bigger microscope than he’s ever experienced.

There is no apparent reason for a neurosurgeon who disbelieves climate change to be rising in the polls except that he benefits from the Herman Cain Effect, which is a wormy calculus swirling in the conservative hive mind that tells them African Americans of all political persuasions will vote for an African American even if he's as lousy a candidate as Cain or Dr. Carson.  Large portions of the Republican racist base believe they can defeat any Democrat by splitting the black vote.  I would like to see this theory tested, which is the only reason I'd like to see Carson maintain his standing near the top of the polls.

-- Jeb Bush has to improve his debate performance. The good news for him is that it won’t be incredibly difficult to do better than he did in Cleveland. The bad news is that he is cratering in the polls. Donors are restless. Bush is flying commercial now to some events rather than on a private jet, a telltale sign of a campaign that is tightening its purse strings. Still, Bush retains significant advantages in his ability to raise money and field a national organization capable of driving supporters to the polls in a drawn-out primary. [...] If he can deliver any kind of body blow to Trump, that would be a huge win for Bush. But at the very least, he needs to show more forcefulness and clarity.

Bush won't be able to lay a glove on Trump.  He can only hope that Trump's mouth eventually does him in.  And even when that finally happens, Bush will see little of the electoral benefit.

-- The freshman U.S. senator from Texas continues to watch the rise of the non-politicians — Trump and Carson and Fiorina — and waits with open arms for the moment when the bottom falls out of their candidacies. Cruz advisers have watched Trump show up to events with little to no organizational effort to identify and collect contact information from supporters. They don’t think he has any capacity to translate his current popularity into votes, even if he doesn’t implode. “I think we are in a breakout moment,” a Cruz adviser said recently. But Cruz does need Trump to lose some altitude for that to happen. Cruz is focusing his energies on denouncing President Obama’s Iran deal, on defunding Planned Parenthood, and on talking about religious liberty. He is third in Iowa and positioned quite well for the fall. He needs to avoid any big errors or damaging moments.

A lot of luck has to break Cruz's way, but I think it is more likely than not that he stands to benefit from the deflation of The Donald, and Mike Huckabee, and the other weaklings mentioned at the end here.

My prediction today is that Ted Cruz will be one of two left standing sometime next spring.

-- Political observers have expressed surprise that Marco Rubio did not reap any real benefit from the first debate, where most agreed that he was among the most impressive. But the U.S. senator from Florida continues to play the role of the tortoise. He does not have a large, expensive campaign and so he does not have to worry about sustaining a massive fundraising effort. He is making smart organizational moves to position himself well in Nevada, which goes fourth in the primary process. His campaign said not to expect any surprises. He’ll be looking to hit singles and doubles, counterpunch if and when he’s attacked, and stay within himself. There’s not a lot of incentive for others to go after him at the moment, however, so it is likely to be clear sailing for him.

Stranger things have happened.

-- The former Hewlett-Packard CEO was the breakout performer from Cleveland. She wasn’t even in the primetime debate, but her eloquence and charisma onstage, as well as in an interview afterward with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, vaulted her into the national conversation and bumped her polling average up to as high as 6 percent in mid-August. She has lost a little momentum since then, but was also given a gift by Trump when he insulted her looks in an interview with a Rolling Stone reporter. Fiorina spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said the Reagan Library debate is “another opportunity for us to introduce Carly to a lot of voters. She still has among the lowest name ID in the field.”

Fiorina is most likely to be someone's vice presidential ticketmate.  Not Donald Trump's but somebody's. The latest news about 30,000 more layoffs at HP should provide easy debate fodder for the debate mods and tough questions for her.

-- Scott Walker has fallen the furthest of any candidate since the debate in Cleveland. For a sampling of all that has been written about his woes, just Google “Scott Walker struggles.” Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), a supposed ally of Walker’s, said in a recent Molly Ball look at Walker’s downward trend, “At some point he will figure out what he actually believes.” Walker has been going the wrong direction for months. He has developed a reputation as a flip-flopper. His campaign knows he needs to have a strong performance at the Reagan Library. “He didn’t use all of his time” in response to every question during the first debate, said an adviser. “He recognizes he can work on that” and that he needs to show “a bit more energy and contrast.” The nod to “contrast” is a signal that Walker will be more aggressive in critiquing others in the field. But Walker also remains in fourth place in Iowa. His favorables are high there. He may need to stop the bleeding, but he doesn’t need to panic yet. “We’re playing the long game,” the adviser said.

As much as he has already lost, he still has the most to lose.

-- The former Arkansas governor may have hoped that his rally outside the Carter County Detention Center in northeast Kentucky, on behalf of the county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, would have given him a bigger bump than he has experienced. And that may still come. But you can bet that Huckabee will bring up his role in the Kim Davis saga. It might be interesting to see what he says if Cruz “mentions” that Huckabee’s staffers prevented Cruz from going onstage and speaking. Clearly, Huckabee wanted the spotlight for himself. But it might be too rich for Cruz, who himself loves the stage, to complain about it.

Mike Huckabee will never be the nominee.  As crazy as the rest of the field is, Huck is just too far gone for even the worst of the GOP base.

-- Like Fiorina, John Kasich’s polling average was so low around the time of the first debate that it’s not visible on the Real Clear Politics graph. And also like Fiorina, the Ohio governor was one of the most talked-about surprise candidates in Cleveland. The home crowd gave Kasich a huge ovation, he made some waves with his welcoming rhetoric toward gays and lesbians, and he has since seized third place in New Hampshire polling, where he is now discussed as a major obstacle there for Bush ­— who is seen as needing to do well in the state since he has little chance to win Iowa. Kasich needs a solid performance here, but nothing spectacular. He just needs to keep his modest momentum going and keep plugging away in New Hampshire.

Frankly, it's Kasich that I worry about the most.  In a saner conservative environment, he'd be the guy at the lead.  And he could still get there.  He's my choice to be standing with Cruz in the rubble of the mid- to late 2016 primary season.



Rand Paul, Chris Christie, and -- once again at the little table -- Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki are all dead men running.  Rick Perry is saving them a seat at the bar for whenever the third debate happens.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sunday Funnies, Unscripted and Spontaneous edition

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.)

Best Houston mayoral debate happened last night

Best performances by the media as well.  Give serious props to moderators Eric Barajas and Rebecca Suarez for solid prep and good questions.  Not tough ones; not softballs.  Update: And to Miya Shay, who wrote them.

Televised in Spanish by Univision and in English by KTRK, the mods asked each candidate about their most-presumed weaknesses.

"I've learned a lot more from my failures than my success," said King, who smoothly pivoted the question into one about becoming a better candidate because of his earlier mistakes.

Current state representative Sylvester Turner was asked about his two failed runs at mayor prior to now, and why voters should take him more seriously this time.

"Those first two occasions are dress rehearsals; this is the real deal," quipped Turner, before turning more serious. "In life, you will go after things and you won't get it. It doesn't mean you get a negative attitude, it doesn't mean you throw in the towel and quick (sic), you keep on."

Neither of these are particularly good answers, you might note.  And after something like 30 of these fora and no traction or buzz surrounding his campaign, Bill King finally decided it was time to come out against the HERO.

King asked to clarify his stance on #hero, says he's opposed to law as it's written. #houstonvote

— Katherine Driessen (@KatDriessen) September 10, 2015

It might be too late for Pothole Bill to recapture the Hate Caucus back from Ben Hall, but since those folks are also racists... there's always a chance.

Since I missed it live (or taped, so far), I can't tell if Turner's answer about Sandra Bland might be an issue or not.  This Twitter exchange set off some alarms.

.@ESmiley4TX I came off couch w/ @SylvesterTurner's comments on #SandraBland! My God... Victim blame/defame=Dangerous #HoustonVote

— Southern Rock (@SouthernRock3) September 11, 2015

We'll wait a bit and see if that's molehill or mountain.

Hall has a commanding presence on stage.  Trained as both lawyer and pastor, he comes off as relaxed and authoritative.  I was astonished two years ago at how poorly done his TV work was.  I suspect we will see better this time.  Watch his one-minute video segment and then King's (scroll down) and see if you agree.

As the perceived (no polling yet? in mid-September?!  The first and last one came out in late June.  WTF, people?) front-runners, Sylvester Turner and Adrian Garcia took the most incoming fire.

Former Sheriff Adrian Garcia was asked about his controversial management of the Harris County Jail, which was first brought to light by ABC-13. Garcia countered that he addressed the problems as quickly as he found out, then added, " If terrible things happen as mayor, I'll take full responsibility, take action."

Garcia just doesn't have it, whatever 'it' may be.  There's no charisma, no real thoughtfulness being demonstrated.  The lights are on but nobody's home.  Maybe he's too scripted or perhaps he over-practiced.  He simply does not show, through either word or deed, the ability to lead the city.  And that's not just me saying that, but the Harris County Deputy Sheriff's union, the people he formerly commanded, who endorsed Turner yesterday in a sharp jab at the former sheriff.

And that's before you even consider his record, which is stained with a lack of accomplishment beyond Bill White's help, and a repetitive cluelessness that crosses the line to malfeasance (not just the jail mess but the no-bid consultant contract) too many times for my comfort level.  I keep trying to give Garcia the benefit of some doubt, but I still find him unfit for public service.

For his part, Chris Bell enlisted Bill King's help in pointing this out again.

.@BillKingForHou we share disappointment in #HPD solve rate. Do you accept @AdrianGarciaHTX response to the crime rate? #houstonvote

— Chris Bell (@ChrisBell2015) September 10, 2015

Only organization in the US with lower clearance rates than HPD was Harris County Sheriff's Office. @AdrianGarciaHTX https://t.co/pitteulQTo

— Bill King (@BillKingForHou) September 10, 2015

Apparently Chris Bell's biggest flaw in the contest is that he hasn't raised as much money as everybody else.  Candidly, that's a benefit and not a problem.  As long as you're not a fan of oligarchy, of course.

It was Marty McVey who got eliminated from contention last night, sadly.

Local businessman Marty McVey was asked about the more than a dozen lawsuits filed against him in the past few years. The lawsuits, one of which is scheduled to go to trial next year, stemmed from his purchase and bankruptcy of Spring Branch Medical Center. 

"We must face litigation and it's part of doing business sometime," said McVey, who countered that the Medical Center was an anomaly in his string of business successes.

Stick a fork in him.  He had some brief shining moments during the early parts of the campaign, but he's not ready for prime time.  Maybe two years from now he can be saying the kinds of things Hall and King are saying now.

As opposed to McVey, I simply don't know what to make of Steve Costello's performance.  He seems a little too bland, unanimated, "low-energy" as somebody has said about Jeb Bush -- and that's saying a lot with McVey and King to compete with.

So... any clear winners and/or losers to you?

Thanks for playing. We have some nice parting gifts for you

The line forms right over there, behind a certain former Texas governor.

-- Jeb! on with Colbert opening night, was neither hit nor flop.  I wish Stephen had asked him about his economic adviser who doesn't believe in democracy.

"Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy. I’m not even a big believer in democracy. I always say that democracy can be two wolves and a sheep deciding on what to have for dinner. ... Look, I’m in favor of people having the right to vote and things like that. But there are a lot of countries that have the right to vote and they’re still poor. Democracy doesn’t always lead to a good economy or even a good political system."

-- Ted Cruz Huck-blocked at the Kim Davis-palooza.



Absolutely priceless.  Like Governor Oops, Cruz has also turned his campaign over to a super PAC, the one headed by David Barton, who believes that AIDS is a curse sent from God and therefore doctors will never be able to find a vaccine for it.

-- South Carolina Republicans to Lindsey Graham: Please stop already.

-- Scott Walker doesn't want to talk about either the past or the future.

ABC News asked Walker how he would respond to the massive influx of refugees from Syria if he were president today. He explained that the query was flawed. As he is obviously not president, Walker argued, there is no way that he would be able to answer that question. “I'm not president today and I can't be president today,” he said. "Everybody wants to talk about hypotheticals; there is no such thing as a hypothetical" — a sentence that probably would have moved Socrates to set Walker's pants on fire himself. 

Walker has avoided answering questions with similar evasions before — although "I'm not president, so I can't answer that" is the closest he has come to finding the secret cheat code that will allow him to advance to the convention without having to provide much insight into how he might deal with the types of difficult decisions a president has to make.

Walker's next campaign reboot involves renaming himself Chauncey Gardiner.

Sorry, no Trump around here.  Plenty elsewhere if that's what you like.  Update: More yahoos who might as well call it quits: Jindal, Santorum, Pataki, Gilmore.  I wonder why nobody mentions Fat Bastard.

Houston mayoral forum tonight, televised in English and in Spanish, and we'll be back to some local coverage after that with a few contested council district race profiles and analysis, and perhaps some other hot rumors circulating.

Hillary Clinton reinvents herself again

This is worse than watching Madonna through the years.  How many more versions do we need?

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Democratic candidate will no longer use the term “everyday Americans” when promoting her plans to bolster the middle class. While continuing to draw on her experience as a new grandmother, Clinton will talk in more general terms about bettering the U.S. for future generations, instead of making specific references to her own, privileged granddaughter. And five months after launching her candidacy with a series of small, media-free meetings with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton’s fall schedule includes upcoming appearances on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon, and plans for larger, more informal gatherings with supporters.

More general terms than she has to this point?

In the face of an email scandal that has swelled alongside the unexpected surge in support for her less-scripted rivals Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, Clinton aides told the Times that they are determined to highlight the former secretary of state’s sense of humor and compassion on the campaign trail.

This is, of course, just the latest attempt to reshape Clinton’s public image. In the many public roles she’s played over the last two decades — from first lady to U.S. senator to secretary of state — appearing down to earth and even human has been among Clinton’s most difficult challenges.

One she is losing. Again.

The word “polarizing” has been used to describe Hillary Clinton since she first hit the presidential campaign trail alongside her husband in 1992. Clearly interested in more than just a supporting role in the White House, Clinton’s unabashed ambition became a source of contention early on in the primary race.

“You know, some people think of you as an inspiring female attorney mother, and other people think of you as the overbearing yuppie wife from hell,” a reporter from Ohio told the would-be first lady in May 1992. “How would you describe yourself?”

By then, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote at the time, Clinton was already “on a mission to soften her image and show that she has a sense of humor.” Months earlier, she’d caused controversy with the now infamous quip, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.” So, Dowd wrote, “she smiled and described herself as a wife, a mother and an activist.”

This is simply excruciating.  And it's closing in on its 24th year in syndication.

In 2014, the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark., released nearly 4,000 pages of internal White House communications, including a series of confidential memos revealing much of the behind-the-scenes work that went into crafting Hillary Clinton’s public image.

Memos from 1995 show Clinton staff determined to rehabilitate the country’s perception of the first lady in the wake of the health care reform failure and ahead of the 1996 election. In one of many memos sent that year, press secretary Lisa Caputo described the Clintons’ 20th wedding anniversary as “a wonderful opportunity for Hillary” to regain public affection and suggested they throw “a big party” and invite People magazine to do a photo spread of the event.

Some of Caputo’s other image-conscious ideas for the first lady included an appearance on ABC’s family-friendly sitcom “Home Improvement,” a birthday celebration for Eleanor Roosevelt to make her look “less extreme” and monthly meetings with women’s magazine editors in an effort to “turn the editors into Clinton surrogates.”

I feel like Malcolm McDowell's character in A Clockwork Orange, forced to watch the carnage until I am desensitized to it.

“For someone like Hillary Clinton, who has gone through so many incarnations in the public eye, at some point they lose themselves,” (author of the 2006 biography Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady Gil) Troy said. “It’s not just about her finding her voice, it’s also about her trying to convince people that she’s authentic.”

Somebody pleeeeze tell the lady that ship has sailed.

Update: "Clinton's bungled reboot", from The Atlantic.

She could win more votes in the 18-59 demographic -- and thus the election, hands down -- in five seconds if she would say, 'I support the full legalization of marijuana', but she won't say that because of the millions she's taken from Big Pharma and the private prison industry.  And I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if she starts twerking I'm voting for Trump.

The Weekly Wrangle

(We're back to Wrangling after one week of Wangling.)

"Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind." -- Henry Ford

The history of Labor Day was, as we know, once quite radical.  The Haymaker Martyrs -- along with these other forgotten heroes of the labor movement -- are best remembered as such.  The battles of labor against their oppressors is somewhat lost to the history books Wikipedia pages, but the struggles represented by the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement remind us that, as Frederick Douglass said, power concedes nothing without a demand, and that there will always be reactionary pushback against that demand.

"One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -- Elbert Hubbard

Here's to the radicals, the anarchists, and the actual socialists (not to be confused with our generation's Democratic ones) who gave us this day of rest, along with the elimination of child workers, the establishment of the 8-hour day and the forty-hour work week, the paid vacation, healthcare and retirement programs that were defined by their benefits and not by the employer's contributions.  They are precisely why we had a prospering middle class in the 1950s -- you know, the good old days for white men every Republican wants to take us back to -- and the reaction to their success from the greediest people history has ever seen is why we don't have one today.

“The only place success comes before work is the dictionary.” -- Vince Lombardi

People fought and died for those freedoms, too.

"Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them." -- Joseph Joubert

Here's the blog post roundup from last week.

Off the Kuff reported on a busy week at the state Supreme Court, which heard the school finance appeal as well as a case involving the city's of Houston's anti-pollution ordinances.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos, and contributing to Daily Kos, is disgusted by the right wing's politicization of a horrible tragedy in Houston. Harris County needs a new sheriff.

SocraticGadfly, having edited photos from last month, shares National Parks' geographic beauty, wildlife, history and astrophotography, in photos, narrative and photo album links from his most recent vacation.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme thinks Bexar County Sheriff Susan Pamerleau should be ashamed of herself for inviting death threats and hate on the TV station that broadcast video of her deputies shooting a man. Now we're supposed to trust her investigation of the incident?

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs finished posting about Houston's citywide races on the November ballot with At Large 4, At Large 5, and the controller's contest.

Egberto Willies has an example of how white allies can dispel misinformation about BLM.

Dos Centavos wants to know why Bernie Sanders doesn't have his own Hispanic billionaire funding his campaign.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston exposes more WARTS on the GOP, and questions the motives of Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman and District Attorney Devon Anderson.

Joe Deshotel at Left in Texas has the latest podcast on 'Guns, Alcohol, and the Confederate Fail Army' posted at Burnt Orange Report.

Gaswork, a new short film by anti-fractivist and actor Josh Fox, premieres in October, and TXsharon at Bluedaze has the details and the trailer.

And last, looking for a balance in a complicated world, Neil at All People Have Value visited the place were Deputy Darren Goforth was killed in Harris County and the location in Prairie View of the incident that led to the police death of Sandra Bland. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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And here's more posts from other great blogs from last week....

Scott Braddock reports on how Texas Republicans are sending mixed signals to business interests.

Better Texas Blog is ready for a school finance solution.

TransGriot gives you some reasons to fight for the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.

The Texas Election Law Blog fears that with redistricting still unsettled, the 2016 primaries could be a mess.

Newsdesk looks back at the Austin smoking ban, ten years after its implementation.

Bonddad has five graphs for 2015, and four bonus ones for a look ahead at our economic forecast.  Don't miss his summary at the end.

Socialist Alternative explains what the two faces of capitalism in the world represent, and the options for left movements going forward.

Mock Scissors Paper has a "Happy Labor Day" message from Scott Walker.

If You Only News presents the perfect TeaBagger socialist-free Purity Pledge.

And Fascist Dyke Motors tries to start a rumor that she is having an affair with Huma Abedin.