Still Early Voting Wrangle

In breaking developments late last evening in the Texas House Speaker's contest, Rep. John Zerwas of Richmond -- probably the most moderate Republican in the unofficial race for the post -- announced his withdrawal.  Forty House Republicans declared their support for Angleton Republican Dennis Bonnen, who had previously told the Texas Tribune he wasn't running for the job.  There will be more news in the days ahead as Democrats are huddling today to determine their course.

And with that as an opener, the Texas Progressive Alliance wants you to be sure to encourage your like-minded friends to get to the polls this week since we know you've already voted yourself.

Ahead of the midterms, NPR notices that our indicted felon/state attorney general Ken Paxton gets busy chasing ghosts ramping up efforts to "combat voter fraud" (sic).

Voting experts say actual instances of fraudulent ballots knowingly cast are extremely rare, leading to accusations that the effort is intended to intimidate voters.

"I think it's all politically motivated," said Greg Westfall, a Texas lawyer currently representing a Hispanic woman who was charged this month with voter fraud. "If you look at the timing, that's what's breathtaking."

[...]

"The fact that there is this concerted effort in Texas to prosecute these cases to the full extent – particularly against people of color – is supremely troublesome," (Beth Stevens of the Texas Civil Rights Project) said. "And then we know what happens in Texas goes to the rest of the country as a model."

Zenén Jaimes Pérez, the communications director for the TxCRP, said the attorney general's own numbers show that his office was tackling an issue that wasn't a growing problem, as shown by the small number of cases in the many years before the crackdown.

"They have prosecuted an average of around 30 election violations since 2004," Pérez said in an email. "To be sure, the AG started the Election Integrity Initiative in without evidence of increasing elections violations," Pérez said.

Beto O'Rourke's plan to maximize the African American vote in H-Town hit high gear over the weekend, with Say Something appearances by musical artists at EV locations around town, the Souls to the Polls rallies, and other efforts accounted by Justin Miller at the Texas Observer.

Looks like @trvisXX showed up at @BetoORourke early vote stop in Houston: pic.twitter.com/luTeISp1Pw

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) October 28, 2018

Even as another 'Beto as Superman' mural was unveiled in Houston ...

Giant Mural of Beto O’Rourke as ‘Superman’ in Houston. #Texas #TXSen pic.twitter.com/I5SSoDojin

— Antonio (@AntonioArellano) October 28, 2018

... the first, in East Austin and mentioned in this 'scattershot' post from Brains and Eggs, was defaced by MAGA vandals shortly after it debuted.

Rogers’s mural has been defaced phrases like "El Paso gentrifier supports Israel" and "No hero” spray-painted onto the artwork in red and white.

Socratic Gadfly does some number-crunching on the early voting surge and offers a quick hot take on what it might mean for the Cruz-O'Rourke Senate race.

Progrexas carries the piece from the TexTrib about how the statewide judicial candidates will win or lose solely on the basis of their party affiliation.

If anyone is poised to spoil (yet another GOP) sweep, it’s R.K. Sandill, a long-serving Democratic district judge in Harris County who’s consistently outraised his opponent, Justice John Devine. In addition to an impressive cash-on-hand tally, an endorsement from the Houston Chronicle and victories in the Houston Bar Association and Texas Bar Association polls, Sandill faces perhaps the most controversial incumbent on the high court. Before being elected to the high court in 2012, Devine was sued for displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. Devine has also boasted publicly that he was arrested 37 times protesting outside abortion clinics.

See also this post at Brains and Eggs for the 'vulnerable, least discussed' Republican -- Presiding Judge Sharon "Killer" Keller of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals -- if the blue wave crests high enough on November 6.

Rewire writes about how a federal court in Texas -- Judge Reed O'Connor's in the Northern District -- will shape the legal fight under way over transgender rights.

Brandon Formby at the Texas Tribune describes the collision of rural and urban values as the high speed rail line between Houston and Dallas continues to move ahead.

Think Progress has details on far-right activists and militia groups headed to the southern border to stop the caravan of Honduran migrants (that are still a thousand miles away).

Earlier (last) week, the U.S. Border Patrol warned landowners in Texas that they could expect “possible armed civilians” on their property because of the news about the caravan. The exact details of when and where the militia would deploy are unclear, but one militia leader told the Associated Press that they would have upwards of 100 members guarding the Mexico-Texas border.

David Collins added some thoughts to Nick Cooper's (he's the drummer for local band Free Radicals) about the border wall.

Stace at Dos Centavos reflected on his weekend of politics y cultura.

The TSTA Blog resorts to begging teachers to support public education at the ballot box.

Texas Standard updates the story of the city of Houston's legal tussle with Southwest Key, the operators of a proposed child detention facility on the northeast side, in reporting that the city has rejected a settlement offer from the company.

A political sign opposing Prop 2 -- the Houston firefighters' pay parity proposal -- was tastelessly posted at the vacant site where five died and thirteen were injured fighting a terrible motel fire just a few years ago.  Fox26's Greg Groogan captured the reactions of HFD union head Marty Lancton and Mayor Sylvester Turner.

"I don't know how you walk up here and see five flags flying, the thin red line and the 13 that were injured and not understand that this is not the place to show your disdain and your vindictiveness toward Houston Firefighters," said Lancton.

[...]

At City Hall, Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is bankrolling the PAC and leading the fight against pay parity, stopped short of an apology.

"I don't know who put it there. I'm just saying whoever put it there, it's important to be respectful and not just of places, but family members as well," said Turner.

Stephen Willeford, the Sutherland Springs "good guy with a gun", is profiled by Michael J. Mooney in Texas Monthly.

Dallas City Hall has stonewalled a pair of open records requests by Downwinders at Risk regarding a mysterious clean air fund and a Joppa polluter.

Jim Schutze at the Dallas Observer thinks it's great that a rec center was renamed for Santos Rodriguez, the boy who was killed by a Dallas policeman in 1973 (updated by the Militant in this Wrangle from August).

Sanford Nowlin at the San Antonio Current reminds us that some Christians do support progressive liberal ideas and politics.

CultureMap Houston describes how 'Old Spanish Trail', aka old Highway 90 connecting El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston and built over hundred years ago missed its intended history ... but created a new one that's now old enough for us to celebrate all its own, particularly in the Alamo City.

Grits came to Houston and took in a Contemporary Arts Museum collaboration by artists about the justice system (highly recommended).

Both CNBC and The Verge covered the news about the Sam's Club in Dallas which will be a cashier-less operation, similar to the five (so far) Amazon Go stores in Seattle and Chicago.

And Harry Hamid went out for a bottle of wine at midnight, took in the 'Trose scene, and got ready to tell another story.

Overflow to Monday Funnies

The Weekly Wrangle will appear, as it did last week, later today.

(click on the smaller ones for a clearer and larger view) 

Sunday Frightful Funnies

See, you just can't let the monsters scare ya too much.

"Squirrel Hill"

#ShakespeareSunday
"O heart, lose not thy nature, let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom." (Hamlet) pic.twitter.com/zzCEOSSucR

— Lizzie (@lizziecanttweet) October 28, 2018

The latest on the latest

Regarding the #MAGAbomber: briefly a Seminole (no), mentally disturbed (momentarily plausible if you believe Trumpism is a mental disorder, though no professional diagnosis exists), but ultimately just an angry Southern white male who got ripped off on his house and then foreclosed on by Steve Mnuchin's bank during the Great Depression ten years ago.

Cesar Sayoc, the Donald Trump-loving Floridian who was taken into custody in relation to pipe bombs mailed to prominent Democrats, was foreclosed on in 2009 by a bank whose principal owner and chair is now Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin.

The documents used to enact the foreclosure were signed by a prominent robo-signer and seemingly backdated. Nonetheless, the evidence was good enough for the famously inattentive Florida foreclosure courts to wave the case through. Years later, Sayoc became a supporter of Trump, who came into office and appointed a treasury secretary who ran the bank that snatched Sayoc’s house.

[...]

In yet another irony, (billionaire Democratic donor and first pipe bomb target George) Soros was one of the investors in the bank that executed the foreclosure on Sayoc’s home.

Details quickly emerged about Sayoc and his apparent devotion to Trump. He drove a van covered in pro-Trump messages. He apparently hadn’t registered to vote until March 2016, pulled off the sidelines by Trump’s messaging. He was a “celebrity” at “Make American Great Again” rallies and protests in South Florida.

Earlier in his life, Sayoc went through a difficult period, and the experience intersects with people allied with his political idol — and some on the other side as well.

I'll leave the rest at that top link to your leisure-time reading.

Sayoc had to declare bankruptcy in 2012, move in with his mother.  That is, when he wasn't living in his van.  The one the FBI hauled off yesterday.

-- Let's not forget to marvel once more at the deftness (or maybe it's daftness) of the conservative agitprop.  Republicans moved the Overton window all the way around to the other side of the house in less than 12 hours -- on the strength of the White House press secretary's statement, mind you -- from #FalseFlags and #FakeBombs to Bernie Sanders, Congressional softball practice shootings, and false equivalencies.  Let's catch this Verge excerpt at the point where Sayoc's exceptional social media trolling becomes the narrative.  (Note that the article was written before confirmation of Sayoc as the pipe bomb mailer, and as such hasn't caught up with the Bernie diversion yet.)

One researcher, Jonathan Albright, counted the number of times that Sayoc replied on Twitter to celebrities and figures with a meme about a Parkland shooting survivor being a “crisis actor” paid by George Soros: 59.

It’s a disturbing irony. Because as authorities continued to discover new mail-bomb targets on Friday, the right wing flooded media channels with suggestions that the bombs themselves were part of a Democratic hoax. It’s a toxic circle: Man falsely enraged by crisis actors allegedly sends bombs; conservative media falsely describes bomb targets as crisis actors.

In a Twitter thread, Albright chronicled how conservatives were able to reach a much wider audience with their hoax claims on Instagram, using various features of the platform. The right wing adopted the hashtag #Soros to share many of these memes, and Instagram helpfully organized the most-engaged posts algorithmically. It auto-populated suggested searches for anyone who began to search for Soros: “soros caravan,” “soros bomb,” “soros jew,” all of which could lead users to further misinformation.

Instagram search results also auto-populated with a bunch of obviously fake Soros accounts, although many of them appear to have been taken down overnight.

On Twitter, a similar phenomenon played out, as Blake Montgomery charted at BuzzFeed. Hashtags, as usual, raced ahead of the truth:

But people on Twitter, including right-wing commentators with name recognition like Ann Coulter, James Woods, and Candace Owens, tweeted that the devices, described as being similar to pipe bombs, were a scheme concocted by Democrats to boost sympathy and turnout before the midterm elections in November. However, there is no evidence to support their claims. And neither the identity nor political affiliation of the perpetrators are known.

Still, #FAKEBOMBSCARE, #FakeBombs, and #FalseFlag — all dedicated to the conspiracy theory — trended alongside #BombScare. Many used #BombScare to tweet the theory as well, but the hashtag itself is not blatantly false like the others. #MAGABOMBER, a hashtag devoted to the idea that the bomber was a right-winger attacking the president’s nemeses, also trended, again with no proof.

In part, this is a now-old story about how social media spreads misinformation in the immediate wake of the crisis. But if Sayoc is indeed the bomber, and these social media accounts belong to him, it suggests something even more disturbing: a person steeped in conservative media, radicalized into violent action — at the same time the same echo chamber, all evidence to the contrary, dismisses a series of attempted assassinations as a hoax.

The platforms have their part to play in reducing the polarization that now consumes us. But as Albright wrote earlier in the week, in a piece about how a false meme spread alleging that Soros had funded the caravan of refugees coming to America, the infrastructure that promotes this misinformation is quite powerful. Whatever captures our attention, if we simply stare at it long enough, becomes real.

-- As to Trump ... well, he's whining about lost momentum for the GOP in the looming midterms.

The would-be terrorist who failed to harm CNN and George Soros did succeed at one thing: ruining President Donald Trump’s week.

Trump had hoped to capitalize on growing Republican enthusiasm in the final weeks of the midterm campaign — stoking fears of a Central American migrant caravan and hoping his Thursday unveiling of a plan to lower prescription drug prices would hold the news media’s attention heading into the weekend.

But even Trump can’t shape the media narrative to his will amid an attempt at mass political assassination and a nationwide manhunt.

“It didn’t get the kind of coverage it should have,” Trump complained on Friday, speaking of his prescription drug proposal. “We’re competing with this story that took place, our law enforcement’s done such a good job, so maybe that can start to disappear rapidly.”

For Trump, the story could not have appeared at a worse time. “The pendulum was swinging back toward the Republicans thanks to the migrant caravan story,” a person close to Trump said. “This story definitely interrupts that positive news cycle for them [and] most definitely favors the Democrats politically.”

One former Trump administration official said the White House is expecting wall-to-wall coverage of the bombing story for three to four more days.

Trump had already vented his frustration on Friday morning, tweeting, “Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this ‘Bomb’ stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!”

What’s worse, Trump’s allies had been speculating without evidence that the failed bombings — which exclusively targeted Trump antagonists — were actually part of a “false flag” leftist plot to make Republicans look unhinged.

[...]

The prospect of right-wing political violence muddies an argument made by Trump and other Republican leaders in recent weeks, ever since demonstrations against Brett Kavanaugh created images of impassioned protesters over-running the Capitol: that Democrats are the party of mob rule, and Republicans the party of law and order.

A former senior White House official predicted right-wing political violence would now become a top campaign issue. “The Democrats now have a message going into Election Day,” the former official said.

Only if they can figure out how to use it to their advantage.  For some reason I'm getting an image of a group of chimpanzees trying to fuck a football.