Feliz Seis de Mayo

-- Is it safe to say Mexico is having a yuuuuuge week?  From Houston Texans' tackle Duane Brown's #MexicanMeat to "I love the Hispanics", it was indeed a special Cinco.

-- Let's count the ways Drumpf fucked it up:

Should a presidential candidate really be hawking his name-brand taco bowl to constituents?

Should Trump really be saying “Hispanics” when Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday?

Should Trump even be trying to win over Mexican voters on Cinco de Mayo, an event that’s not celebrated in most of Mexico and serves primarily as a day for Americans to party and drink tequila?

Should Trump be celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a crispy taco salad -- a product invented in Texas?

Should he even be claiming Trump Tower Grill has the best taco bowls when Yelp gives the restaurant a mere 3.5 stars out of five? (Update: Also the Tower Grill does not even sell the taco bowls.)

Why is Trump eating that taco bowl next to a photo of his ex-wife Marla Maples?

Haven't we seen enough bad holiday tweets from #brands? This we assume is just the beginning from Trump. Lest we forget, one of his campaign promises is to end the War on Christmas.

It's going to be a riotous six months for comedians and snarky bloggers, but a seriously bad time for our nation and democracy generally.  So I'm kinda torn.

-- Did you hammer a few too many margaritas yesterday?  Taco Cabana has your coupon for hangover breakfast tacos that's only good this morning.  And hopefully you didn't consume any of the rot-gut at some of these fine Houston establishments.

-- Tony Buzbee, Rick Perry's lawyer, got his drink on a couple of months too early.  He'll be spending some of his Memorial Day weekend getting ready for his DWI trial.

More on Drumpf's racism and misogyny in the pipeline, but I need to go pick up some tacos.

Requiem for a jerk

Despite the booger-eating, the associations with the worst religious freaks he could wrangle, the unintentional physical trauma he has put his wife and children through, and even all the good things he has done for Democrats... I'm going to miss making fun of the big lug.

Maybe I'll drive past his house and throw eggs, pitch toilet paper up in the trees or something.

Ted Cruz is back home in Houston.

He and his wife Heidi visited and thanked loyal volunteers and campaign staff Wednesday evening at Armadillo Palace.

Close to a hundred people packed into the restaurant for the homecoming. Cruz mingled with the hometown crowd that was filled with many of the grassroots supporters that have been key to the rise of his political career.

"It's wonderful to be home," Cruz told KHOU 11 News as he was leaving the event.

Now he and his family are getting back to somewhat of a normal life. They didn't leave the restaurant with a driver or a motorcade, Heidi drove them home.

For the love of a Jesus Christ that she believes in and I don't, I hope she packs her bags and goes back to New York and Goldman Sachs before she has another nervous breakdown.

As for Ted, the Libs are beckoning.

Libertarians seeking their party’s presidential nomination say Sen. Ted Cruz should endorse them rather than Donald Trump, who rebranded the Texas Republican “Lyin’ Ted” before forcing him out of the GOP primary with a crushing victory in Indiana on Tuesday.

Cruz hasn’t said if he will endorse Trump, whose campaign trail attacks included retweeting an unflattering photo of the senator’s wife and repeating allegations that Cruz’s father was with Lee Harvey Oswald before President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

On Tuesday, Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral.”

The vicious GOP primary, the Libertarians hope, will push Cruz to endorse them and deliver his socially conservative, Constitution-toting base, which they view as rational for a variety of policy reasons as well.

“Ted Cruz has always been brave and stood up to the establishment of his own party, even when it came to shutting down the government, so I wouldn’t put it past him,” says Austin Petersen, one of three candidates seeking the Libertarian nomination at a Florida convention this month.

“With Donald Trump winning, I might be the only pro-life, pro-Constitution candidate on the ballot,” Petersen says. “[Cruz has] always shown the courage to buck the leadership of his own party. It would be shocking, but I don’t think it would be out of character for him.”

New Mexico’s former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson also is seeking the Libertarian nomination, which he won in 2012 before collecting more than 1 million general election votes. Johnson is doubtful Cruz would endorse him but says it would be welcome.

“That would be huge, that could be the quantum leap we need, the attention we need,” says Johnson, who was supported by 11 percent of responsdents in a recent hypothetical match-up against Trump (at 34 percent) and Democrat Hillary Clinton (at 42 percent) from Monmouth University.

“There is an opportunity here,” he says.

Golden.  Then again, he could return to Senate and become a... something besides a pariah.

As Cruz returns to Washington, does he maintain his firebrand, anti-establishment approach — which has inspired his base support but rubbed many of his colleagues the wrong way? Or does he take a more collegial tack, seeking to build upon some of the mainstream GOP support he received in recent weeks?

Because right now, GOP consultant Bill Miller pointed out, Cruz is a “dead man walking in the Senate.”

Former House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, recently called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh.” Former President George W. Bush reportedly said last year, “I just don’t like the guy.” And Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who ultimately endorsed Cruz, has joked about Cruz being shot on the Senate floor.

“If he chooses to run again, he would need to soften his approach,” said Denton County GOP chairwoman Dianne Edmondson.

A kinder, gentler Ted.  We can all dream, I suppose.  See Kuff for his take.

DefeaTED

He went down swinging.

Cruz craps out; Sanders surprises pollsters again

At least he's good at shutting things down.

Moments before Ted Cruz publicly ended a campaign for president that had lasted more than a year, he stood backstage and thanked his closest friends, supporters and advisers for their help and support.

Some sat at round tables. Conservative commentator and TV host Glenn Beck stood and watched. A bar table covered with Starbucks cups and an ironing board with an upright iron stood off to the side.

When Cruz finished speaking, the group of about 50 people applauded — several of them wiping away tears — and Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, walked away from them, looking down, and shook his head.

Cruz’s speech to a group of a few hundred devoted followers from the main stage minutes later was met with disbelief and anguish.

“From the beginning, I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory,” Cruz said. Murmurs rose in the audience.

“I’m sorry to say,” Cruz said — and cries of “No, no!” rang out — “it appears that path has been foreclosed.” This brought an even louder “NO!”

As Cruz announced that he was suspending his campaign “with a heavy heart,” a girl of about 12 began to sob. Her father stood nearby with his hand over his mouth and said, “What are you doing?”

Cruz sought to reassure his followers inside the Grand Hall Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza hotel. “Hear me now: I am not suspending our fight for liberty,” he said. His father and mother, divorced 20 years ago but standing next to one another on this night, stood behind him.

A gaggle of Cruz’s campaign staff stood 20 feet from the stage, many of them red-eyed. After Cruz finished his speech, he began to greet supporters in the front of the crowd, but then abruptly returned backstage after just a few moments, apparently too emotional to continue.

His supporters were left to pick up the pieces and to ponder their choices now that businessman and reality TV personality Donald Trump stands alone as the likely Republican nominee and the only alternative to Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Here's the best thing that happened last night for Clinton.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I might vote for Hillary,” said Jason Winters, 40, a machinist from Crawfordsville, Ind. “She’s a criminal. She’s a murderer. But she’s better than an authoritarian dictator.”

I'm at a loss for words, but I'll pick up the pieces and go on. 

Bernie Sanders triumphed over Hillary Clinton in Indiana’s open primary Tuesday, boosting the grassroots candidate’s argument that the party’s superdelegates should flip their support to him in July’s Democratic convention. 

Sanders spoke to thousands of supporters in Louisville, Ky., before Indiana’s results were in. He called for an end to closed primaries and criticized Clinton for her ties to Wall Street and paid speeches to Goldman Sachs — a sign the heated rhetoric on the Democratic side shows no signs of cooling down.[...]

Sanders continues to trail Clinton by hundreds of pledged delegates and faces an extremely difficult path to close that gap. And Tuesday’s win doesn’t     propel Sanders very far; he and Clinton will roughly split Indiana’s 83 Democratic delegates because his victory was narrow. But the win fuels the senator’s argument that he should keep fighting until the end and creates a headache for Clinton, who has made a hard pivot from frontrunner to presumptive nominee. “I think we can pull off one of the great political upsets in the history of the United States,” Sanders said in a press conference late Tuesday night.

I'm still thinking he can't, but I won't hide my glee at how angry his pushing ahead makes Hillary''s crew.  Once again, the polling failed.

Only a handful of polling outfits were surveying voters ahead of the Indiana Democratic primary—but none of them saw a Bernie Sanders win coming.

The RealClearPolitics polling average for the state had former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton up by just under 7 percentage points as of this morning. But minutes ago, the TV networks began to call the race for the senator from Vermont.

FiveThirtyEight says NBD, but they have been wronger than anybody this cycle, and they only aggregate everybody else's polls, not conduct one.  That means everybody who bet +7 or more on Clinton were the biggest losers.  Those people should stay away from the racetrack this Saturday.

More on the reality Nate Silver is denying here and here.  One excerpt:

There is not a current, publicized investigation underway to figure out why the polls are almost always off, in a way that predicts that Sanders will not do as well as he ultimately does.

But since the polls have consistently predicted that Sanders will earn fewer voters than he goes on to win, the following questions arise.

If the latest RealClearPolitics poll says that Sanders beats Trump nationally by 14 points, does that mean that Sanders would actually beat Trump by more than 14 points, given that this polling source is one of the ones that has been wrong by underestimating Sanders?

If, as the Washington Examiner is reporting, Sanders is beating Clinton in national polls by two percent, and in the Indiana contest the poll was off by 9 percent, is Sanders really beating Clinton by 11 percent nationally?

No one has officially answered these questions. But Bernie Sanders has won another primary — Indiana — a “surprise” to those who continue to rely on polls that consistently under-predict Sanders’ performance. 

Food for thought.  I just don't believe Bernie is going to get to test this polling theory in 2016.  Hillary is a little more than likely to get enough delegates out of California in one month to end the conversation, finally.

But until then, there's going to be more chuckling from the left of the left and a little more teeth-grinding and cursing under their collective breath from the right of the left.

Clinton's Victory Fund is a money-laundering scam

Extremely unfortunate revelation for the presumptive nominee.

In the days before Hillary Clinton launched an unprecedented big-money fundraising vehicle with state parties last summer, she vowed “to rebuild our party from the ground up,” proclaiming “when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen."

But less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filings.

The venture, the Hillary Victory Fund, is a so-called joint fundraising committee comprised of Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees. The set-up allows Clinton to solicit checks of $350,000 or more from her super-rich supporters at extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney’s house and at a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John.

The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO’s analysis of the FEC records found.

Maha even beats up on Rachel Maddow and the rest of the talking political heads for whiffing on the story.  There's more at the Politico link about the shell game and the deception of the state parties that so many Clinton supporters have both hailed as restorative to a Democratic majority and used as a club to beat Bernie Sanders with (because he wasn't doing it).  They were of course extending the argument out to "he's not a Democrat", another falsehood.

Even Clooney's piousness -- expressed in a television interview just a couple of weeks ago -- makes him look like either a liar or a fool.

Clooney admitted that ($353,000 to sit in a room with him) was "an obscene amount of money." But he justified it by saying "the overwhelming amount of the money that we're raising, is not going to Hillary to run for president, it's going to the down-ticket."

No, it isn't.

“Particularly the parties in states that are not competitive, they worry that the DNC won’t let them keep any of the money, but the historical reality is that they wouldn’t have gotten the money anyway,” the (anonymous for fear of retribution from the DNC and the Clinton campaign) operative said.

Hello, Texas.

Let's cut to the chase: this isn't going to cost her any support she hadn't already lost long ago.  Her supporters just see this as part of the game that they think she's best at playing.  They are unmoved by the prevailing sentiment among all voters that the game is rigged in precisely this fashion.  They disregard all instances of her corruption, staying uniformly focusing on 'whatever it takes to win'.  And according to the most recent Electoral College projections, they are winning.

Seven swing states, in buttery yellow above.  But it's not even that close, with two hundred and forty-seven EC votes already in the virtual can.

For the Democrats, a victory in 2016 entails zero expansion of the blue map, merely the limiting of blue-to-red transformations. Assuming the lean, likely, and safe Democratic states remain loyal to the party, the nominee need only win 23 of the 85 toss-up electoral votes. And if a lean Democratic state such as Wisconsin turns red, it is relatively easy to replace those votes with one or two toss-ups. 

Yeah, it's early blah blah.  It's early enough for me to say that if Hillary Clinton snatches defeat from the jaws of a victory like this, then such a massive failure as that will be all hers to bear.  Alone.  It won't be my fault; it won't be your fault, and it won't be the fault of her handlers, bundlers, staff, or sycophants.  It will all be on her.

This is why I keep saying you are free to vote your conscience, or your progressive principles.  My vote for Jill Stein in Texas does not any more elect Donald Trump than someone's in California, or any of the other 41 states whose electoral outcome is not in doubt.

So all the Sanders campaign can think of to do is go directly after her superdelegates.

(T)he Vermont senator said that those superdelegates supporting the former secretary of state ought to rethink their pledge — particularly in states where he won handily.
“I would ask the superdelegates to respect the wishes of the people of those states,” Sanders said.

Overall, Clinton has the support of 520 superdelegates, while Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist, has “all of 39” — despite winning 17 primaries and caucuses “in every part of the country.”

Sanders pointed out that although he won Washington state’s Democratic caucuses by 46 points (73 percent to 27 percent) and 25 of the state’s 36 pledged delegates, Clinton has the support of 10 of Washington’s Democratic unpledged superdelegates.

“We have zero,” he said. “Obviously, we are taking on the entire Democratic establishment.”

Yeah, how's that going. 

As NPR's Tamara Keith points out, Clinton would still be ahead in the overall delegate count even if the superdelegates from the states Sanders won shifted to his side.

"If you mandate that the superdelegates be divvied up proportionally, the margin for Clinton narrows further," says the Washington Post's Philip Bump. "But, in the same way that she still has a lead in pledged delegates because of proportional distribution, she has a lead with superdelegates, too."

When superdelegates are also corporate lobbyists, you once again face the realization that the system is corrupt and built to stay that way.

On July 25, these superdelegates will cast votes at the Democratic National Convention for whomever they want, regardless of primary and caucus outcomes. Democrats like to describe superdelegates as mostly elected officials and prominent party members, including President Obama and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

But this group, which consists of 21 governors, 40 senators and 193 representatives, only makes up about a third of the superdelegates. Many of the remaining 463 convention delegates are establishment insiders who get their status after years of donations and service to the party. Dozens of the 437 delegates in the DNC member category are registered federal and state lobbyists, according to an ABC News analysis. 

In fact, when you remove elected officials from the superdelegate pool, at least one in seven of the rest are former or current lobbyists registered on the federal and state level, according to lobbying disclosure records.

That’s at least 67 lobbyists who will attend the convention as superdelegates. A majority of them have already committed to supporting Hillary Clinton for the nomination. And 41 lobbyist superdelegates, almost six in 10 of all lobbyist superdelegates, have already committed to supporting Clinton.

Howard Dean and Tom Daschle both long ago sold themselves to their corporate masters.  Want the full list of superdelegates?  Here you go.

But with respect to the superdelegate math shown by Vox above, there's no coffee brewing anywhere around the Sanders camp.  I really and truly don't blame Clinton folks for being mad about his inability to face reality, but their outrage over it has to be tempered for the sake of the sure-to-be-elusive party unity when the Bern finally goes out.

As long as Berners are still feeling it, they're not facing the truly inevitable, which probably means too many of them wind up taking next Election Day off and going to the beach.  That may be a bad thing for Democrats -- not Clinton herself but down the ballot -- if they cannot replace the lost votes with ones from Latinx and Republicans set adrift by Trump.  I'm thinking they probably can, because nothing else really explains this level of hateful spew.

Still not seeing too much for Clinton and her ilk to be concerned with in the sprint to the finish, but the accumulation of these self-inflicted wounds might tip the public perception at any time.  One stumble too many and she's suddenly vulnerable.  To losing the presidency to Trump.

Who does that speak the worst of?

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progessive Alliance hails yesterday's May Day celebrations around the world...

... and anticipates more celebrating with Cinco de Mayo next up...

... as it brings you this week's blog post roundup.

Off the Kuff looks at new polling evidence showing a shift in partisan preference towards the Democrats in Harris County.

Socratic Gadfly moves outside of politics to ask if recent injuries may give Timmeh, Manu (and Pops?) a Los Spurs retirement gift.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos insists that Texas Republican leadership and its obsession with public bathrooms -- while it ignores crucially important health and environmental challenges -- is a literal threat to our lives. Houston: Hurricanes, Frequent Flooding and now Zika too?

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows that Republicans run the Child Protection Services, but still.  Blaming the victim in domestic abuse cases?   Still?

Egberto Willies thinks Larry Wilmore went too far with the one-black-man-to-another shoutout to President Obama at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston covered Satan's press conference announcing that he would file suit against former speaker of the US House John Boehner for defaming his character (specifically comparing the Lord of the Underworld to Sen. Ted Cruz).

The Lewisville Texan Journal spent a stormy evening with the local emergency operations management crew as they went into action during last week's storms.

Texas Vox took note of the most recent (high contamination-level) nuclear waste storage application to be filed in Andrews County.

In the wake of the adverse effect of revisions under Republican appointee Ron Hickman, Dos Centavos reports that November Democratic opponent Ed Gonzalez challenged the interim Harris County sheriff to reinstate the county jail's inspectors and diversify staff.

The passing of the legendary Texas sports reporter and editor Blackie Sherrod was noted by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Neil at All People Have Value made a small donation to help with recent flooding in Houston. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

More posts from other Texas blogs!

Just as the Texas Observer mentioned that the state Supreme Court unanimously blocked the city of Houston's ordinance to improve its air quality, Culture Map Houston posted the American Lung Association's State of the Air 2016 report, which showed Dallas surging into the lead for the worst breathing in Texas.

Grits for Breakfast has your police blotter updates, from the Harris County grand jury that was never told by the DA that an LEO was drunk when he shot two men, to the continuing miscarriages of justice in the Waco biker shootings.

Trail Blazers takes note of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's dip under the waters of the River Jordan.

Prairie Weather questions the worshipping of a certain type of person.

Tory Gattis at Houston Strategies does the Chamber of Commerce's work for them.

 Robert Rivard considers Julian Castro's place on Hillary Clinton's VP short list.

The TSTA Blog cites actual statistics experts on the subject of using statistical methods for teacher evaluation.

Space City Weather puts Houston's recent flooding into historical perspective.

Paradise in Hell advises Ted Cruz to listen to himself.

Andrea Grimes would like to know who will protect us from the likes of Dennis Hastert and Johnny Manziel.

Offcite gives a tour of Houston's new clinic for the homeless.

Adam Briggle, father of a transgender son, calls out Denton County Sheriff candidate Tracy Murphree for a transphobic post on Facebook. Murphree then agreed to meet with the Briggle family to talk with them and get a better understanding of the issue, but as Equality Texas reports, he abruptly backed out before their meeting could take place.

Sunday Funnies

Revolution news update

With Hillary Clinton’s emergence as the likely Democratic presidential nominee, online chatter about Green Party candidate Jill Stein as a November alternative for supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders is getting louder.

[...]

Bill Boyarsky writes at Truthdig that Sanders’ supporters “would be welcomed by Dr. Jill Stein. The physician-activist is favored to win the Green Party presidential nomination this year after heading the party’s ticket in 2012.” Stein told Boyarsky, “The whole reason for having an independent third party that cannot be silenced is there are 25 percent of Bernie’s voters who are not going into that dark night to vote for the No. 1 cheerleader for Wal-Mart, for Wall Street, for an endless war. They are looking for another place to hang their hat.”

Inquisitr reports on Stein’s outreach to Sanders, writing that Sanders has “refused the Green Party’s courting in the past, and he says he won’t play the part of the spoiler. Still, supporters of the idea point out that the Green Party National Convention takes place in August, following the Democratic National Convention in July. On social media, many have said that superdelegates should consider that hundreds of thousands of Sanders’ supporters might demand that he accept Stein’s offer” to join a Green ticket.

Sputnik News reports that according to journalist Sam Sacks, “If Sanders lost the Democratic nomination, millions of his voters could opt out from supporting Clinton, possibly seeking another candidate.” Dave Lindorff of Op-Ed News also writes about a possible Sanders spot on the Green ticket.

Stein has offered to allow Sanders to run as the Greens' presidential nominee, stepping back to V-P herself.  That can be heard in this interview.

It's probably nothing for ignorant corporate war-loving Democrats -- you know, the ones who still believe Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election -- to worry about.  Yet.  For the moment it's important for #BernieOrBusters to clearly understand how the election laws for write-in candidates in each of the 50 states very probably nullify their attempts to get him elected in that fashion, to say nothing of the chances of that happening on its best day, or the futility of trying to send a message when the telephones lines are all down (so to speak).  That part of the system is also rigged against them, you see.

In the meantime, I'll just refer to "#5", or "#2", or whatever number is appropriate every time a neoliberal gets his or her wings on social media.  I need some people to self-deport from my timeline and this seems like the best way to get the heavy trash to the curb.

Still going to need your ID to vote in Texas

Supreme Court says 'no' ... but might reconsider before the fall.

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an emergency appeal to stop Texas from enforcing its challenged voter ID law. But the court said it could revisit the issue as the November elections approach.

The law has been in effect for recent elections, even after a trial judge struck it down in 2014 and an appellate panel found last year that the law had a discriminatory effect on minority voters.

The challengers in the ongoing lawsuit argue there is no reason to allow the requirement to show picture identification at the polls to remain in place.

But justices rejected the plea in a brief order Friday. The full New Orleans-based appeals court will hold a new hearing on the Texas law in May.

The high court said that it is aware of "the time constraints the parties confront in light of the scheduled elections." If the full appeals court has not issued a ruling by July 20, the court said, it would entertain a renewed emergency appeal over the voter ID law.

Gerry Hebert, who runs the public interest law firm that represents Texas voters challenging the law, said Friday's order gives his clients a chance to again ask the Supreme Court for help if the appeals court does not rule quickly. "This order gives us the opportunity to protect Texas voters if the 5th Circuit fails to rule in time," said Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center.

Some of this delay by the 5th Circuit is because of Antonin Scalia's death early this year.  He oversaw the rulings for this appeals circuit; Clarence Thomas -- the weirdest dude you can imagine -- inherited that workload from his deceased pal.  The slow-walking of Merrick Garland's nomination has put the remaining eight justices in a bind.  Have you signed the petition telling the Senate to do its effing job yet?

Matt Angle at the Lone Star Project shines up the silver lining.

The Texas voter ID law has been ruled discriminatory by three previous federal courts. Yet Texas Republican leaders have continued to appeal the case and demand its enforcement despite previous rulings that it discriminates against hundreds of thousands of eligible Texas voters. The case is currently pending before the full 5th Circuit Court of Appeals awaiting a formal hearing on May 24th. The Supreme Court’s ruling today should force an Appeals Court decision by July 20th, which will likely be immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by the losing side. 

It's on track to be settled before we vote this year.  Photo ID is probably DOA once we get a ninth justice, whether that is Garland in December on recess or someone President Hillary Clinton appoints in January of 2017.  Either way, there's no need to allow yourself to be bullied onto the Clinton bandwagon by some neoliberal with a SCOTUS bat.  (The Notorious RBG is just short of being bulletproof, and speculation about the health of SCOTUS judges is rude at any time.)

Scattershooting while mourning Blackie Sherrod

Felix McKnight (seated) joined co-publisher James Chambers Jr. (left), 

Blackie Sherrod and A.C. Greene as the staff of the Dallas Times Herald 

worked on coverage of the JFK assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. (Courtesy DMN)

Blackie Sherrod, the greatest Texas sportswriter of his generation or any other, now and forevermore, died Thursday afternoon at age 96.

Sherrod died at his home in Dallas of natural causes, said his wife, Joyce. He had been in hospice care for the past week.

Sherrod was voted Texas Sportswriter of the Year a record 16 times and was honored with the prestigious Red Smith Award, national recognition for lifetime achievement. He won so many awards over more than six decades at Texas newspapers, including The Dallas Morning News starting in 1985, that he stopped keeping plaques or certificates for anything other than first place.

But his greatest trophies may have been the lasting memories he created for legions of readers and his peers, in particular.

He was nicknamed "Blackie" by a newsroom boss when he came in to the office one morning having absorbed a little too much sunshine, a story that speaks to the extraordinary unacknowledged white privilege of his era.  His soft bigotry didn't suffer from low expectations; it was just soft bigotry like most everybody else's in the '40's up to the present day, but especially in the '60's.  You'd have to read a lot written by and about the guy to get to that POV, and I have.

You might like to start here with this 1975 Texas Monthly piece.

Blackie Sherrod inspected the three or four manicured acres surrounding A. C. Greene’s semi-mansion in a much-advantaged section of Dallas, cocked his head to monitor the sweet calls of summer-morning birds, and sat down at an outdoor table loaded as if to accommodate a threshing crew: platters of eggs, bacon, cantaloupe slices, exotic breads, jams and jellies, coffee, pitchers of fruit juice, and maybe assorted samples of caviar or candied yak’s ass. He took in the grandly bent weeping willows, the sun-dappled swimming pool and bathhouse, the tall hedges hiding the green grounds from the gazes of Democrats or other riffraff. Sipping a spiced bloody mary, he said, “Boy hidy, A. C., all this sure is . . .”

Sherrod hesitated, as if determined to choose the exact right word—it is, after all, the way he makes his living—and you could see ol’ A. C. Greene, a Depression-era Abilene boy who was not born fast friends with money, puffing with the pride of ownership and preparing to respond to some record-breaking gracious compliment.

“. . . totally,” Blackie said, “and completely . . .”

Out of this world, he might say. Or beyond belief. Somesuch. A. C. nodded and beamed like a politician being bragged on, patting a well-shod foot as if impatient to deliver his own pretty little acceptance speech.

“ . . . vulgar,” Blackie Sherrod finished.

Before the manor’s lord could blink good, Sherrod smote him again: “What’d you plant the most of this year, A. C.? What time you commence whupping-up on them slaves?” A. C. Greene, knowing when he’d been out-country-boyed, threw up his hands and laughed a crippled giggle.

He was indeed the best there's ever been, at a time when good newspaperin' was at its best, when people read the Fort Worth (and Dallas) papers for news about the Cowboys from all over the state of Texas and probably all of Oklahoma and certainly parts of Arkansas and Louisiana.  Sherrod also covered Democratic conventions when Democrats were still riding high 'round these parts, which tells you how blessed he was with longevity.

He spawned a legion of great writers like Larry King (who wrote that TM piece forty years ago) and Dan Jenkins and many more, not necessarily including those of us who cribbed from him.

A columnist on the Texas Gulf Coast so persistently thieved from Sherrod’s column that Times Herald authorities ultimately complained and the would-be genius was fired. In 1950, when Sherrod was a columnist for the Fort Worth Press and I was the rookie one-man sports department for the Midland Reporter-Telegram, it was my urgent habit to be on hand at the Scharbauer Hotel each day to buy all six copies of the Press left at the local newsstand. Five were pitched into the handiest trash can. This wasteful practice guarded against my bosses and readers learning where I got those many little funnies shamelessly sprinkled throughout a daily column carrying my own by-line. Had the Midland paper observed a policy of granting raises, I’m confident Blackie would have earned me one.

Not that the whole world was fooled. No, for when I moved on to the Odessa American, a resident sports scribe named Ben Peeler wigwagged me into a neutral corner to whisper that our newspaper wasn’t big enough for both of us to crib from Blackie Sherrod, and, by gum, he claimed certain inalienable seniority rights. Within the last fortnight I enjoyed a magazine piece by a freelance writer who’d stolen enough lines from a single Sherrod column to retire on. All that doesn’t bother Blackie much more than the running colic, “seeing as how I’ve robbed ole Shakespeare and S. J. Perelman purty good myself.”

He was just as solid when he wrote about moonshots and presidential assassinations.

There's more at both links above and I'll stop here before I get in the way of myself.  I've long needed an editor and now I'm afraid Blackie's gonna be looking over my shoulder.

We're set for November. Woo hoo.

In a front-runner's rout, Republican Donald Trump roared to victory Tuesday in five contests across the Northeast and confidently declared himself the GOP's "presumptive nominee." Hillary Clinton was dominant in four Democratic races and now is 90 percent of the way to the number she needs to claim her own nomination.

Trump's and Clinton's wins propelled them ever closer to a general election showdown. Still, Bernie Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich, vowed to keep running, even as opportunities to topple the leaders dwindle.

Trump is a little further away but is bragging louder as usual.

Trump still must negotiate a narrow path to keep from falling short of the delegates needed to seal the nomination before the Republican National Convention in July. Cruz and Kasich are working toward that result, which would leave Trump open to a floor fight in which delegates could turn to someone else.

Trump was having none of that. "It's over. As far as I'm concerned it's over," he declared at his victory rally in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York. He now has 77 percent of the delegates he needs.

In the clearing stands a boxer.

News organizations called all five states for Trump within 30 minutes after the polls closed – a victory that should net him around 100 delegates when the counts are finalized. However, analysts believe Trump will be hunting for at least 250 more delegates even as his celebratory boasts Tuesday oozed confidence. Indeed, he went so far as to declare, “I consider myself the presumptive nominee.”

His rationale: “When a boxer knocks out another boxer, you don’t have to wait for a decision. That’s what happened tonight."

If you take him at his word, he'd rather be fighting... someone else.

“If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote,” he said to close out a press conference after sweeping five northeastern primaries. “And the beautiful thing is, women don't like her.”

Yeah, that's just gorgeous, Donald.  Women like you even less (shocking, isn't it).

This is going to be such a hideous path through the summer and early fall to the bitter end.

With Clinton's four victories — she ceded only Rhode Island to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — she now has 90 percent of the delegates she needs to become the first woman nominated by a major party. Clinton kept her focus firmly on the general election as she spoke to supporters Tuesday night, urging Sanders' loyal supporters to help her unify the Democratic Party and reaching out to GOP voters who may be unhappy with their party's options.

"If you are a Democrat, an independent or a thoughtful Republican, you know that their approach is not going to build an America where we increase opportunity or decrease inequality," Clinton said of the GOP candidates. She spoke in Philadelphia, where Democrats will gather in July for their nominating convention.

We'll see how that goes.  Still sounds like condescension and scolding to me.

"I applaud Senator Sanders and his millions of supporters for challenging us to get unaccountable money out of our politics and giving greater emphasis to closing the gap of inequality," she said, "and I know together we will get that done."

She acknowledged that "too many people" feel powerless, and worried "that those of us in politics put our own interests ahead of the national interest." But she reminded her supporters, in a message to Sanders' supporters as well, that bold goals must be "backed up by real plans."

"After all, that is how progress gets made," she said. "We have to be both dreamers and doers."

Doesn't seem to register that her definition of 'progress' isn't what Sanders folks are looking for.  How much of his support transfers to her is essentially the last question left to answer, and it will be six months before we know for sure.

Robert Reich observes that the endgame for anti-establishment forces in the GOP and the Dems are mirror images of one another (which is not to say that they're the same), and invokes the rise of the Tea Party and Occupy to make his point.

Will Bernie Sanders’s supporters rally behind Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination? Likewise, if Donald Trump is denied the Republican nomination, will his supporters back whoever gets the Republican nod?

If 2008 is any guide, the answer is unambiguously yes to both. About 90 percent of people who backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries that year ended up supporting Barack Obama in the general election. About the same percent of Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney backers came around to supporting John McCain.

But 2008 may not be a good guide to the 2016 election, whose most conspicuous feature is furious antipathy to the political establishment.

Outsiders and mavericks are often attractive to an American electorate chronically suspicious of political insiders, but the anti-establishment sentiments unleashed this election year of a different magnitude. The Trump and Sanders candidacies are both dramatic repudiations of politics as usual.

If Hillary Clinton is perceived to have won the Democratic primary because of insider “superdelegates” and contests closed to independents, it may confirm for hardcore Bernie supporters the systemic political corruption Sanders has been railing against.
Similarly, if the Republican Party ends up nominating someone other than Trump who hasn’t attracted nearly the votes than he has, it may be viewed as proof of Trump’s argument that the Republican Party is corrupt.

Many Sanders supporters will gravitate to Hillary Clinton nonetheless out of repulsion toward the Republican candidate, especially if it’s Donald Trump. Likewise, if Trump loses his bid for the nomination, many of his supporters will vote Republican in any event, particularly if the Democratic nominee is Hillary Clinton.

But, unlike previous elections, a good number may simply decide to sit out the election because of their even greater repulsion toward politics as usual – and the conviction it’s rigged by the establishment for its own benefit.

That conviction wasn’t present in the 2008 election. It emerged later, starting in the 2008 financial crisis, when the government bailed out the biggest Wall Street banks while letting underwater homeowners drown. 

Both the Tea Party movement and Occupy were angry responses – Tea Partiers apoplectic about government’s role, Occupiers furious with Wall Street – two sides of the same coin. 

Pick it up from there over here, where he adds in the mega-bank bailouts, Citizens United, and the rest of the past eight years' worth of history.

My mission beginning a year or so ago was to more actively facilitate the departure of progressives -- what we can now call BernieDems -- away from Team Blue and toward Team Green, or Team Red as the case may be.  Contrary to Kos' latest change of tone, a revolution within the Ds -- as Sanders has learned the hard way -- just isn't the most effective tool to affect change (no fear of loss on their part if you just slouch slowly back into the fold).  So I'm going to keep doing that in my own signature style around here, which ought to further alienate my old pals in the blues party some more (too bad about that).

As a result I'm going to be posting excerpts and links to articles that reinforce that message and much, much less about the he said/she said bullshit.  You'll see more like yesterday's about intriguing matchups downballot in states other than Texas, because Texas is once again a foregone conclusion.  Just not that interested in what the world's worst conservatives will do, and plot to do, with absolutely no political consequences whatsoever.

Update: Charles cites the Houston Area Survey's latest revelation -- which I had read before posting here and wasn't nearly so encouraged by -- as reasons for the local Donkeys to be hopeful.  Its conclusions about Houston turning slightly more purple are not based on turnout, just a mild 'leaning' affiliation, and links to Campos, who again blames Dems for not getting his community to vote for them.  My question for soft Latino/a Ds who aren't voting is: WTF are you waiting for?  Us regular folks, white and black alike, aren't sitting around for engraved invitations to perform our civic responsibilities.  Whatever it is that's holding you back, you might consider not waiting for somebody to knock on your door and/or send you a mailer.  And please don't blame anybody but yourselves for the policies Republicans are going to continue to inflict upon you if you're staying home on Election Day.

That's the most I can do to help Hillary get over the Trump hump.  (She really shouldn't need it.)

Moving on

There are some more presidential primary elections today, all of them in blue Northeast states.  You may hear something today about Facebook outages limited to Bernie Sanders pages and groups as discussed overnight on Twitter.  I don't find that newsworthy but hey, whatever floats your personal watercraft.  Let's look down the ballot up north for some more interesting elections.

The presidential primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island will get top billing on Tuesday night, but there are several other down-ballot contests to pay attention to as well.

One Senate primary in Pennsylvania will impact how competitive the race there might be in November, while in Maryland a bitter Democratic contest that's turned on race and gender will likely decide the state's next senator.

Two incumbent Pennsylvania congressmen are in danger of losing their primaries amid questions about their ethics and personal relationships. And in Maryland, another open House contest has reached record spending levels after a self-funding candidate spent more than $12.4 million of his own money to win the seat.

PA:

The fight for who will take on Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in the fall is the most consequential of Tuesday night's battles for the Senate. This Keystone State slot is one of several GOP-held seats in White House battleground states that went for President Obama four years ago — and that Democrats are aiming to flip in order to take back the upper chamber.

National Democrats have rallied behind Katie McGinty, a former state secretary of environmental protection and gubernatorial chief of staff, who they believe is the stronger general election candidate over former Rep. Joe Sestak.

The retired Navy admiral Sestak has had bad blood with both state and national Democrats ever since his 2010 run for Senate, when he declined to step aside for the party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary. Sestak won the Democratic nomination, but lost that November to Toomey.

Now, most Democrats feel Sestak is still too much of a loose cannon and generally a weaker candidate than McGinty. They've poured plenty of money and resources into helping her in the race, and a poll released Monday showed her with a very narrow advantage. President Obama has endorsed her and Vice President Joe Biden was in his birth state to campaign with her on Monday, too.

But Sestak shouldn't be underestimated — he still has grassroots support and never really quit running for the Senate. He even walked 422 miles across the state when he launched his campaign last year, and he's argued that national Democrats' overt support for his rival will backfire.

There is a third candidate running, too, who's in single digits: Braddock Mayor John Fetterman. The long-shot hopeful has endorsed Bernie Sanders in the state's presidential primary, and has publicly wondered why the Vermont senator hasn't returned the favor.

"I'm sitting here with my corsage, waiting," Fetterman told Slate.

MD:

There hasn't been an African-American woman in the Senate in nearly two decades — and that absence, coupled with her personal story as a struggling single mother, is a central part of Rep. Donna Edwards's pitch to voters.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen has argued that voters shouldn't decide based on gender or race but instead on who's the best qualified to succeed the retiring Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the longest serving female senator in history.

In fact, he's released a list of 100 African-American women leaders who are backing his candidacy over Edwards. Van Hollen's supporters have also highlighted stories questioning how effective Edwards has been in the House and how well she works with other members of Congress. In response, Edwards allies have said such criticisms are sexist.

About 40 percent of the electorate is expected to be African-American, and who wins the bitter contest could come down to the Baltimore region. The city was roiled last year after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody; trials are now pending against several officers. And a competitive mayoral primary also featuring two black women could help drive up turnout in the city.

"It's not that the black community doesn't like Chris Van Hollen. The issue is that there's little ideological daylight between the two," Mileah Kromer, a professor of political science and a pollster at Goucher College in Baltimore, told NPR. "Now you have an opportunity to send someone who actually looks like you to the Senate, and that's not lost on a lot of black women in Baltimore City."

Whoever wins the Democratic primary will be the heavy favorite in the general election in the blue state.

Also in MD: Will gobs of money make the difference?

Most Maryland voters had never heard of wine retailer David Trone before, but it's a good bet they know him now after the Total Wine & More co-founder spent $12.4 million of his own money blanketing the expensive DC-area airwaves and mailboxes in this suburban Maryland district.

The open seat to succeed Van Hollen has become the most expensive House race this year, and Trone is now the largest self-funding candidate in history after dipping deep into his own pockets in this nine-person race.

Trone told NPR the investment was necessary to make him competitive with his better-known main rivals: former local TV anchor Kathleen Matthews (who's married to MSNBC's Chris Matthews) and state Sen. Jamie Raskin. Most observers believe it will be a close contest between the three top candidates.

Trone has defended his decision to self-fund his campaign and, like another deep-pocketed GOP businessman running for president, has said that by paying for the race himself he isn't beholden to anyone. But his rivals have charged Trone is trying to buy the seat.

While Trone's slickly produced ads in high rotation have certainly raised his name in the region, some say his blanketing approach could backfire.

"I think that your primary campaign was over the top. It was just too much, too often," one voter told Trone outside a metro stop last week. "It was like getting a phone call from your girlfriend asking you if you still loved her every 15 minutes."

PA again.

Rep. Chaka Fattah is fighting for his political life after he was indicted on 29 counts, including racketeering, bribery and mail fraud, for allegedly misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds — some from his 2007 bid for Philadelphia mayor and his congressional account.

The 11-term Democrat could face significant jail time if he's convicted, but his immediate concern is staving off a strong primary challenge. He has three opponents, but the biggest threat is from state Rep. Dwight Evans, who has served in the state legislature for nearly four decades.

But even with criminal charges looming over the race, the Philadelphia Inquirer notes that the contest has been a surprisingly cordial affair. Fattah has reminded voters of his seniority in Congress and his seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee.

Evans has racked up the most money in the race and netted endorsements from major Democratic figures, including Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney and former Gov. Ed Rendell and Gov. Tom Wolf. But if the other challengers split the anti-Fattah vote, the embattled congressman could still hang on.

And last, this PA GOP affair.

Tea Party candidate Art Halvorson's primary challenge against Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster is also worth watching, though the seven-term incumbent is probably safer than his Democratic colleague Fattah.

At issue is the divorced Republican's relationship with airline lobbyist Shelley Rubino, which his detractors have said is a conflict of interest given the major committee he chairs.

Shuster has argued there's no conflict since he's implemented a rule in his office that blocks Rubino from lobbying him or his staff.

"It's a private and personal relationship," the congressman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "It's a private matter. Let's move on to something else, some other questions."

But to his challenger Halvorson, who lost to Shuster in a 2014 primary by nearly 20 points, that's exactly the kind of Washington-insider coziness he's running against.
While Shuster has dwarfed his incumbent challenger in fundraising — bringing in $2.6 million to Halvorson's $64,000 combined with $200,000 in self-funding — the anti-Washington, anti-establishment tide could boost his underdog bid.

That's more than I've posted about any Texas races in awhile.  Speaking of that, there's a local runoff election happening at this very moment, but the newspaper of record doesn't much care about it so why should I?  Oh, and my state representative is acting completely unaccountable to his constituents again, much like the statewide Republicans do.

No news here.  What is there about Texas Democrats and Republicans both being petty crooks and thieves that's worth discussing?