The Weekly Purple Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is gathered here today to get through this thing called mourning the loss of Prince as it brings you this week's blog post roundup.

Off the Kuff looks at the different reactions to Houston repealing HERO and North Carolina passing its harsh anti-equality law.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos insists that something has to be done about Houston’s serial flooding.  Bold political leadership and action are woefully lacking. Houston: We really can’t do this every year.

Socratic Gadfly notes there's no "old lace" in the GOP race, just arsenic vs cyanide, and speculates on how it might play out.

The greater Houston area has received four '100-year" storms in the past twelve months.   PDiddie at Brains and Eggs thinks it's either time to find a new name for these apocalyptic floods, or perhaps address the various root causes (climate change, too much concrete, greedy land developers) of them.

Many people in McAllen cannot travel. Why? Crazy immigration rules terrorize families. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants immigration reform.

Egberto Willies observes that even a Koch brother is afraid of a Republican presidency.

Texas Leftist returns after hiatus with two posts this past week, regarding Texas Republican leaders' wanting to refuse their Medicaid expansion cake but eat it too, and a 'wake up and smell the coffee' post about Houston's serial flooding.

Bay Area Houston asks Sid Miller where his campaign manager Ted Nugent might be hiding these days.

The HugGate scandal in Denton grew more significant in a two-part story detailed at TXsharon's Bluedaze.

Lewisville's Lake Park won't be open in time for Memorial Day weekend, due to flooding and for the second consecutive year, reports The Lewisville Texan Journal.

Neil at All People Have Value took note of the hopeful 2016 Texas Green Party convention. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

The Houston Press marks the occasion of the first-ever appearance of Star Trek android Data -- err, Houston's own Brent Spiner -- at Space City Comic Con on Memorial Day weekend.  (Spiner's character also resurges in the 'Independence Day' sequel, forthcoming.)

And if there are any Star Wars fans among Wrangle readers, you have an opportunity to be an extra in scenes for that series' next movie, to be filmed near Victoria, Texas (sometime in 2017, so plenty of time to get prepared).

Beyond Bones takes a stand against shark finning.

The Makeshift Academic urges Democrats to accept a lame-duck confirmation of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court if it is on offer.

Better Texas Blog celebrates Tax Day.

Grits for Breakfast dismisses talk of a "crime wave" in Texas.

Paradise in Hell just can't even with Sid Miller.

Somervell County Salon noticed some paychecks getting delayed at Glen Rose Medical Center because the local bank wouldn't approve the short-term loan used to pay employees.

Prairie Weather asks what a blogger is supposed to do when he/she is fed up with the news, and answers the question.

And Pages of Victory describes some of the artists and songs among his old record collection.

Sunday Funnies

The Sacramento Bee's Jack Ohman, with the 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner.

Sanders is a Democrat, and this makes Clintonites seethe

So at least something good has come out of it.

Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said on Wednesday that the senator will remain a Democrat after the 2016 presidential election.

Weaver was asked on Bloomberg News' "With All Due Respect" whether Sanders would still be a Democrat even if he lost the presidential nomination.

"Well, he is a Democrat. He’s said he’s a Democrat, and he’s gonna be supporting the Democratic nominee, whoever that is," Weaver responded.

And when asked of Sanders was now a "Democrat for life," Weaver said, "Yes, he is."

*heavy sigh*

Some will insist this is not where his heart lies; that it is only technical; a formality -- and to be clear I fit this description myself -- but that Sanders and his people have repeatedly insisted it so is unfortunate from my long-held (well, two-plus years) perspective.  His declarations remove a substantial portion of his political leverage IMHO, but avoid his being demonized as a Nader-ish spoiler (sic).  I do not expect Status Quo Democrats to do anything except pretend to be happy about this development, and not until post-primary season, and certainly not for the foreseeable #StillSanders future.

Clinton's campaign, eager to move past Sanders and focus on the general election, is getting impatient and even angry at some of the attacks.

One in particular has Clinton worried. Sanders' campaign is raising the issue of whether the Clinton campaign is violating campaign finance rules with how it raises money jointly with the Democratic National Committee -- an argument that has the Clinton people "pissed," as one source told CNN.

The concern is that the theme could play into Donald Trump's recent moniker for her -- "Crooked Hillary" -- especially if he is the Republican nominee.

They worry about the impact of such attacks because they're not aimed just at Clinton but also at the DNC and could weaken the nominee in a general election fight.

Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton's communications director, told reporters Tuesday night that the Sanders campaign "has been destructive" to that point that he is "not productive to Democrats" and is "not productive for the country."

Decrying what she described as "false character attacks," Palmieri compared them to criticism Clinton gets from the GOP. "And any time you mimic Republican attacks, we think that is destructive."

Yeah, that tone will be good for post-primary party unity, all right.  They just don't care any more, though, especially when they're accusing me of being buddies with Ted Cruz.  Of course this is all just 'fun'.  There's a lot of Clinton people that have been removed from my social media timelines as a result of this sort of 'fun' (some are still tethered, if somewhat tenuously).  I find I have to prune them on a weekly basis, just like the wisteria that grows on my side fence.

So the invasive species known as neoliberalism claims another urban-legend-believing victim.  Taken at his word, Bernie Sanders has been assimilated by the collective.  Maybe I can just hope he's lying, like I do about Hillary's in-advance declarations of war on Iran.  And Trump/Cruz is the greater evil, which is the best aluminum-siding sales job they can come up with to push Hillary on Bernie's supporters.

Energizing, isn't it?

66% of Democrats said the primary contest is "energizing" the party...

Feels like negative energy to me, but that is allegedly good for you, so what do I know?

Fidel Castro still not dead, but close

By his own acknowledgement.

“I’ll be 90 years old soon,” Castro said in his most extensive public appearance in years. “Soon I’ll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without a truce to obtain them.”

YaddayaddavivalarevoluciónyaddaCubaLibreyadda.

“This may be one of the last times I speak in this room,” Fidel Castro said. “We must tell our brothers in Latin America and the world that the Cuban people will be victorious.”

Es demasiado dramática.

Fifty-five years after Fidel Castro declared that Cuba’s revolution was socialist and began installing a single-party system and centrally planned economy, the Cuban government is battling a deep crisis of credibility.

With no memory of the revolution’s heady first decades, younger Cubans complain bitterly about low state salaries of about $25 a month that leave them struggling to afford food and other staple goods. Cuba’s creaky state-run media and cultural institutions compete with flashy foreign programming shared online and on memory drives passed hand-to-hand. Emigration to the United States and other countries has soared to one of its highest points since the revolution.

A nation's leaders completely out of touch with its citizens.  Imagine that.

The ideological gulf between government and people widened last month when President Barack Obama became the first U.S. leader to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years and delivered a widely praised speech live on state television urging Cubans to forget the history of hostility between the U.S. and Cuba and move toward a new era of normal diplomatic and economic relations.

The Cuban government offered little unified response until the Communist Party’s Seventh Party Congress began Saturday, and one high-ranking official after another warned that the U.S. was still an enemy that wants to take control of Cuba. They said Obama’s trip represented an ideological “attack.”

[...]

Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer at The New Yorker who is writing a biography of Fidel Castro, called the day’s events “a way of restoring some kind of essential revolutionary presence or muscle in the room after the star-struck effect of Obama.”

The Cuban government appears to be engaging in “overcompensation for being bowled over a little bit by Obama’s unexpectedly elegant and charismatic performance in Havana,” said Anderson, who covered the visit. “Cubans who aren’t prepared for the full extent of what he was saying, it took them aback.”

I posted mi Cubana's story -- following the passing of my father-in-law -- with the title of the phrase he and his wife (and I presume many other Cuban expatriates) often used to describe Fidel: "bicho malo nunca muere".  There's going to be a yuuuge party at our favorite Cuban restaurant on the evening of his demise, and I won't miss it for all the tea in China.

Not sure where we will celebrate on the day Dick Cheney finally dies, but that might be just as big a deal.  Maybe both guys are drinking the same blood of Camp Fire Girls, who knows.

New York, New York. SMH

Trump and Clinton smash their challengers and reassert control of their nominations.

A preview of the face-biting to come

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton scored sweeping victories in nominating contests in their home state of New York, and immediately cited them in arguing they are all but unstoppable as their respective parties' presidential nominees.

Trump's crushing defeat of Ted Cruz in Tuesday's primary election tilted the energy in the Republican race back to the front-runner, just as Republican National Committee members begin meeting in Florida on Wednesday to discuss their July convention, where the nominee will be chosen.

For the Democratic favorite, Clinton's more narrow victory over Bernie Sanders snapped a string of victories by the 74-year-old democratic socialist and gave her a much-needed lift with more tough fights ahead.

The eventual victors of the Democratic and the Republican nominating campaigns will face each other in November's general election.

Trump's win, celebrated to the tune of Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" at Trump Tower in Manhattan, marked a rebound from his Wisconsin defeat two weeks ago. It set him up for another big night on April 26, when Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Maryland will hold primaries.

Sanders lost NY for the same old reason: black voters (22% of the electorate there) went 75-25 for Clinton.  They made up their minds a long time ago and they ain't changin' 'em.

Those same five states mentioned in the last graf of the excerpt above were also named in Sanders' most recent e-mail overnight as where the battle would go on, so it appears neither he (nor Ted Cruz) is ready to throw in the towel.  In fact Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign chief, still seems more than a little defiant despite various calls for his man to quit and fall in line.

By the (CNN) numbers ...

With 93% of the vote in at 12:15 a.m ET, Trump was in the lead at 60% while Ohio Gov. John Kasich was at 25.2% and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was at 14.8%.

With 94% of the Democratic vote in, Clinton was leading Sanders 57.7% to 42.3%.

Clinton outperformed the advance polling, including the exit polls taken just before voting concluded last night, which showed a very tight race.  If Sanders' campaign funds start to dry up as reality slowly sinks in, he'll take a powder and call it a day.  At this point that's the only trend to watch for.

So what next, revolutionaries?

As promised, Bernie will end up endorsing Hillary. Doesn’t mean we have to follow in lockstep like programed cyborgs pic.twitter.com/Jz2MZOytzi

— Viva la causa! (@70torinoman) April 20, 2016

Could you be more specific?

Time to turn to Jill Stein. #NYPrimary

— mohammad barakat (@Mbarakat1990) April 20, 2016

Good.  This is the right idea.  Writing him in is wrong.  Write-in votes aren't counted in many states because of onerous pre-certification requirements (see this from the TXSOS, this from Ballotpedia, and this handy start-to-finish slideshow on the process here in Texas).

It's starting to get a little boring at this point, isn't it?