Monday, February 03, 2020

The Weekly Wrangle


The Texas Progressive Alliance celebrates Black History Month and the many Texans to be feted: Bessie Coleman, Barbara Jordan, Hattie Mae White, Juanita Craft, Curtis Graves, Wallace Jefferson, Beyonce', Simone Biles, Dr. Thomas Freeman, S. Lee Merritt, and many, many others.


We'd also like to congratulate the former Dallas Texans -- and the Hunt family of Dallas -- on their Super Bowl victory yesterday.  And with the Iowa caucuses on the calendar this evening, Democrats will "soon" have some actual White House front-runners as opposed to polling ones.

In his regular Update of the Democratic presidential primary, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs tried not to get too excited about the Bernie surge taking place.  (FiveThirtyEight.com is currently projecting delegate counts in IA, NH, and NV as winners for the Vermont senator.)  Berners have been out in force across the Lone Star State ...



PDiddie also got a momentary thrill out of the Texas Lyceum poll, but last night's UT-Tyler/Dallas News survey splashed a little cold water on that.


Meanwhile Kuff examined that Lyceum poll.  SocraticGadfly, having seen the Chomskyites beg Howie Hawkins to run a "safe states" strategy if he's the Green Party nominee, loudly applauded Hawkins for essentially telling them to STFU.

Two weeks prior to the Texas primary, Jolt Action is hosting these presidential candidates in Pasadena (presuming none of them drop out before then, of course):


Unfortunately Jolt is not doing the same for John Cornyn's challengers, as they have already endorsed their founder in the US Senate primary.


That would be in concert with their candidate's continued disingenuousness about her surname (something she has apologized for, but continues to say).


The TexTrib's Patrick Svitek tweeted some polling about the Senate Ds.


In the wake of the HD-28 Democratic debacle, everybody had a take.  Some were hot; some were not.  Some were lukewarm.


Mustafa Tameez, blogging for the Houston Chronicle, says the road to the majority in the Texas House goes through the middle of the electorate.  ('Middle' is the wrong label for independent voters as Tameez describes them.  Using his research, a better label would be 'seldom' or 'sporadic' voters; certainly not 'low information' or 'non-voters'.)

In last week's Wrangle, this blogger ranted about misuse of the word 'progressive'.  This week, both Gadfly and Jaime Abeytia picked up on that with rants of their own.

Robert Rivard at his Report noted that SBOE member Ken Mercer (who represents a district Hillary Clinton carried in 2016) is big ol' peddler of wingnut dishonesty.

Nonsequiteuse thanked the Houston GLBT political caucus for listening to members who asked them to hold lawmakers credibly accused of sexual harassment to account.  The Caucus made several surprise endorsements at their weekend meeting.



As is often the case at these meetings, a few took offense.



Houston Justice Coalition showed how they're registering voters currently in county jail.

Some developments in recent chemical plant explosions:



Houston Public Media reported that the Houston and Dallas metro areas both suffered over 100 days of poor air quality in 2018, according to a report from Environment Texas.

Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast has the police blotter.



And a second helping of Grits.

The Justice Collaborative has launched The Ogg Blog, providing background on various criticisms vs. embattled Harris County DA Kim Ogg as she faces a bevy of opponents in the coming March primary. Grits is grateful; I'd intended to compile a long, greatest-hits post for Ogg as a bookend to this one about Travis County DA Margaret Moore, so they've saved me the trouble.


Closing out another week with some Great State items on the lighter side of the news.

The battleship Texas will be relocating from its longtime berth at the San Jacinto State Historic Site following repairs to its hull.  Where it is going is still to be determined.


This book review from Justin Miller at the TO regarding El Paso politics is revealing.




Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, February 02, 2020

Super Bowl Sunday Funnies












Posted by at No comments:

Friday, January 31, 2020

The *Updated Election 2020 Update: Attack of the #NeverBernies

Millennials form human shield around Bernie

No need to expend many pixels on the latest smear (though if you blinked, you might have missed it); here's the debunk in a five-count thread.


Here's what's so remarkable about the age in which we live.


And no story is complete without a little snark.


You simply cannot be up to date without being plugged in (and Facebook ain't where it's at).  This full episode unfolded, was punctured and deflated, and then mocked within 24 hours.


Tune in tomorrow to AM Joy and see if he's right.

Biggest shock of my week was the Texas Lyceum poll.


My dreams seem to be turning into reality.  Trying hard to curb my enthusiasm (Shelly Kuffner is outlying there for me.)

-- I'm devoting more of this week's Update to the folks running for the White House who simply don't get enough publicity.  Let's begin with the US Green Party and to a lesser extent Howie Hawkins, whom I believe will be the nominee.  The GPUS posted a rejoinder to the call from nine people --including Noam Chomsky -- to stand down in 2020.  Background from Louis Proyect:

On January 24, an open letter appeared on various leftist websites urging the Green Party to follow a “safe states” strategy in the 2020 presidential elections. It argues that if Howie Hawkins or any other Green Party candidate runs in contested states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, there is a danger that he or she would steal votes from the Democrat. Needless to say, if that candidate is Bernie Sanders, there will be that much more pressure on the Greens to tamp down their campaign.

Although formulated as recommendations to the Greens in general, the open letter is actually a polemic against Howie Hawkins’s CounterPunch article “The Green Party Is Not the Democrats’ Problem.”

There's much more there, but before you go ...


(At the risk of repetition: I'm #BernieorBust, which is to say more specifically #BernieorYellowVests in Milwaukee this summer, and #BernieorGreen if he gets cheated out of the nomination again.  I like the Green Party and many of its candidates and will vote for them if they don't make it plainly impossible -- just as with many Democrats and damn near every Republican and Libertarian.  Party affiliation and identity politics mean nothing to me.  Policies exclusively.)

Now you can finish reading Louis Proyect for the full story.  He (mostly, with the conditions expressed above) speaks for me.  Couple more things.


And from Howie himself:


I'm grinning in anticipation of the pending "Jill Stein" recriminations.  Maybe someone will Photoshop Howie's head onto her body at that dinner table with Putin and Mike Flynn.

Direct your questions to the comment box.  Please don't bother with any #VotePooNoMatterWho, #RussiansHackers, and related Re-Insist-Ants nonsense.

-- Rocky de la Fuente, and everybody in his family, appear to be morons.  I have no clue any longer as to what his strategy to be nominated for some party, any party's president may be.


-- The latest in town hall and debate news:



How may times must it be said?  #CNNisTrash


-- And briefly, the straggling Donkeys, but first: This Week in Joe Biden Lies.



By this time next week, Klobuchar is on the sidelines with Delaney.

-- Though 538.com says there haven't been enough Iowa polls -- and the ones there have been may be of low quality due to our ever-changing lifestyles --  by these indications both Yang and Tulsi appear to be encouraging their supporters to move to Bernie as second choice next Monday night.  Biden seems to be striking out in these same efforts.


Update: Amy Minnesota Nice might be making an upward move in the Hawkeye State, according to the same fellow at 538, but all of this cautiousness and anticipation for more polling seems like a hedge against more of the kind of damage they self-inflicted from 2016's debacle.

-- A few words about Money Bags.

Why is it that the Jackasses still bitching about Bernie "not being a Democrat" don't ever mention the decades Bloomberg was a Republican?  This is his record:

  • Endorsed George W. Bush and spoke on his behalf at the RNC
  • Endorsed Susan Collins
  • Endorsed Scott Brown over Elizabeth Warren
  • Endorsed Pat Toomey, giving him credibility with enough suburban moms in 2016 to cost Katie McGinty the election

By these actions alone he has completely prevented meaningful gun safety legislation, as well as any of the other democratic reforms he claims to care about.  And yet ... Democratic 'consultants' are cashing his checks by the assload.

"Welcome to politics", Cillizza?  This is the politics we're ending when Bernie gets elected.


Update: The DNC just let this oligarch buy his way into the presidential debates.

-- Desperate times call for desperate measures, and BootEdge is desperate.

"I hear Vice President Biden, saying that this is no time to take a risk on someone new," Buttigieg said. "But history has shown us that the biggest risk we could take with a very important election coming up is to look to the same Washington playbook and recycle the same arguments and expect that to work against a president like Donald Trump, who is new in kind." Earlier this month the Biden campaign released an ad in which a narrator tells voters, "This is no time to take a risk."

Buttigieg then went after Sanders.
"Then I hear Senator Sanders calling for a kind of politics that says you got to go all the way here and nothing else counts," he said. "And it's coming at the very moment when we actually have a historic majority, not just aligned around what it is we're against, but agreeing on what it is we're for."

[...]

Buttigieg then continued with the thrust of his argument: The debate between Biden and Sanders, the two Democrats leading in most statewide polls in Iowa, are too focused on the past.

Yeah, Pete doesn't want to hear about anybody's past.  Especially his own.


I'd rather Sneaky Pete stay in the race awhile longer, as I feel his supporters fall in behind Goofy Old Joe once he falls out.

-- Elizabeth Warren did have a nice moment at the impeachment trial.

"The question from Sen. Warren is for the House managers," Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial, began.

"At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government, does the fact that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution?" he read.


The question appeared to create discomfort for Roberts, whose role as the trial’s presiding officer requires him to read senators’ queries aloud — even those raising questions about potential damage to his own legitimacy, or that of the judicial institution he has assiduously sought to shield from the political fray.

It was unclear if the question was a dig at Republican obstruction, Roberts’s unwillingness so far to take a position in the witness fight or both.

Who's ready for a little snark?




Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

HD-28 and Democrats' irrational exuberance

Alan Greenspan's catchphrase about the 1996 stock market dot com bubble certainly applies to the nationwide hype that built up around the special election in Fort Bend County, concluding yesterday with a very predictable result.


How predictable was it?


A container ship full of establishment Democrats should have seen it coming, but didn't.  The orgs with too much money shot their wads like it was Pride Week.

Up through the final days, the race is attracting a remarkable amount of money for a state House contest, starting with Gates himself, who has loaned his campaign over $1.5 million and been able to easily outspend Markowitz. To be sure, though, the Democratic effort has been well-funded, with Markowitz raising over $800,000 since July 1 and benefiting from six figures of outside spending.

A majority of Markowitz's money has come from state and national groups with an interest in flipping the Texas House. Her biggest donors have been the House Democratic Campaign Committee and its national counterpart, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which have each given her well over $100,000. The DLCC's investment is nearing $200,000 after it infused $125,000 into her campaign last week to help pay for a last-minute ad buy on broadcast TV.

Markowitz has also been massively boosted by Forward Majority, a national Democratic super PAC focused on flipping state legislatures. The group has been easily the biggest known outside spender in the race, unloading over $400,000 on TV and digital ads, mailing and polling.

A dozen of the highest-profile state and national Dems -- Beto O'Rourke, Julian Castro, Texas House minority leader Chris Turner; and presidential hopefuls Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Mike Bloomberg -- spent their political capital for ... another long-shot gamble in November?

All three House specials held serve yesterday.  Anna Eastman replaces Jessica Farrar and Lorraine Birabil steps into Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson's old chair, so the magic number for Pink Dome Donks is still nine.  The real change happens with a right-wing freak like Gates taking the place of John Zerwas, who was, in my own experience, as principled a Texas Republican as you could find.  He understood in 2013, for example, that expanding Medicaid was the right thing to do (he's a anesthesiologist, after all).  He could have been Speaker instead of Dennis Bonnen had he wanted the job.  I would think there are very many in Austin today who wish that he was.

Gary Gates can't carry John Zerwas' jockstrap.  He's a Trump Republican.  And as Michael Li of the Brennan Center noted, HD28 was drawn for the "vote red no matter who"-- be it Zerwas or Gates -- constituents who live there.


It would be best if Team Blue focused its efforts elsewhere than here.  Because if they can't take the statehouse back in the autumn, this district will have to wait several more years as it purples up into 'more competitive'.
Posted by at 1 comment:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)