The Weekly Wrangle

With this week's blog post and lefty news roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance tips their cap to all you very stable geniuses.

The Rivard Report covered the opening of Dream Week 2018 in San Antonio.

Socratic Gadfly blogged about Beto O'Rourke's visit to Northeast Texas.

RH Ratcliffe at Burkablog got reactions from some Texas mayors regarding US ICE director Thomas Homan's threat to lock up elected officials in 'sanctuary' cities.

Dos Centavos wonders if Latin@s will roll with Trump on the basis of him actually doing something -- no matter how terrible it might be -- on DACA.  (Senate Democrats who folded on a fix at the end of last year left the DREAMer activist community outraged.)

PoliTex saw and heard the backlash in Fort Worth to that city's selection of Governor Greg Abbott as the grand marshal of the MLK parade next week.  And the Houston Press is still wondering why there are two different MLK Day parades in the Bayou City.

The Lewisville Texan Journal has a profile of Willie Hudspeth, the civil rights activist and Vietnam vet running for Denton County Judge.  And from the Texas Observer: Austin community organizer and self-described 'democratic socialist' Lewis Conway Jr. wants to find out if a convicted felon can get elected to, and then serve on, city council.

The Lion Star blog sees a state district court judge in El Paso who wants off the 2018 ballot, and DBC Green blog links to Kuff regarding all the Democrats who have filled the primary that are gunning for a seat in the US House.  And Elliott Morris at Decision Desk HQ also has five numbers that frame where the 2018 Congressional elections stand.

With so many candidates on the primary ballot, Texas Leftist has his candidate questionnaire, TLCQ 2018, up and ready to go, so check it out and look for responses to come in soon.

The TSTA Blog urges teachers to be the voting bloc some state legislators fear they can be.

A Trump social media guru previously based in San Antonio (having relocated to Florida in preparation for the 2020 re-election campaign) has been called to testify before Congress in the ongoing investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, reports the Current.

Neil at All People Have Value noted that Trump was making a case for street protests against corrupt government in his tweets about demonstrations in Iran.  APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

The Texas Tribune takes a look at the furniture rental outfits across the state who threaten their customers with jail time, and follow through on it, if they miss a payment.

Mike Snyder at the Chron wants to consider the question of how Houston should grow post-Harvey.

The Texas Living Waters Project talks to Dr. Andrew Sansom about his freshwater environmental activism.

And Harry Hamid reported some issues with an arson investigation in his 'hood.

Sunday Bigger Funnies

2018's first Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes everyone reading this has a happy, healthy, prosperous, and very progressive 2018.  (No substitutes or pretend-progressives will be accepted.)

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs picked his Texan of the Year, and unlike the Dallas News, neither Joe Straus nor white supremacist Richard Spencer were ever in contention.

SocraticGadfly riffed on the idea of the Twelve Days of Christmas and found 12 jobs even better than knitting for Hillary Clinton.

In its own state news roundup, Texas Standard wants you to know that the Parks and Wildlife Department is hosting more than 75 hikes in state parks across Texas today.

Texas is leading the nation in flu cases, reports the San Antonio Current.

Grits for Breakfast has Brennan Center data that shows murder rates were down in the largest Texas cities in 2017, but violent crime was up slightly.

Save Buffalo Bayou asks more questions about Houston's 'flood czar', Steve Costello.

A poll graphed by jobsanger indicates that the American public wants action on gun safety legislation in 2018.

A poll reported in the Dallas Observer shows Mark Cuban leading Trump in Texas.  The poll, conducted by PPP, has the billionaire investor listed as a Democrat, but Cuban has said that if he runs for president in 2020, he will do so as a Republican.  (There's a point about shitty polls or dumbass Texas Democrats -- or both -- to be made here, but I'll save it for later.)

Jeremy Wallace in the SAEN's Austin bureau sees Texas Democrats in a quandary as to whether to embrace the Bernie Sanders/Our Revolution progressive movement ... or not.  The article details the awkward fence-straddling of presumptive Senate front-runner Bob "Beto" O'Rourke, who got another puff piece in Texas Monthly's latest issue.

Neil at All People Have Value thinks Democrats running for office at every level of government in 2018 should be asked how they will respond to the threat of authoritarian government in the US. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Down With Tyranny was first with the news about gubernatorial candidate Tom Wakely, who will be rocking out in South Texas in late February as part of a Latin@ GOTV effort.  There will be six free concerts -- in six cities in six days -- by Comba, led by Jorge Guevara, the former lead singer with Elefante, and past and current members of Maná, a Gualdalajara rock band who own 4 Grammys and 8 Latin Grammys.

Blogging El Paso Democratic politics (not new but rediscovered, and added to the right-side column) is Jaime Abeytia's Lion Star blog, while Off the Kuff took a closer look at Democratic Congressional candidates around the state.

DBC Green blog has some thoughts on killing one's inner Trump, and Zachery Taylor has a long and righteous rant about Trump's unqualified judicial appointees.

Michael Agresta at the Texas Observer writes about photographer David Taylor's exhibit (at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, through January 28) documenting the monuments marking the true Texas-Mexico border, and the pictures tell their own story of how the line between the two countries has shifted through the years.

The Texas Tribune passes along the details about a South Texas bureaucrat who became a multi-millionaire when the federal government ordered construction of sixty miles of border fencing ten years ago.

And as crude oil climbs back to a profitable range for drillers, frackers, and refiners -- the Permian Basin shattered production records going back to 1973 -- Texas Monthly's Energy Report prefaces Lawrence Wright's long piece in the New Yorker about the resource's long Texas history and influence on everything in the state.