Sunday, April 25, 2021

Sunday "A Stone of Hope" Funnies

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Friday, April 23, 2021

EOW Wrangle from Far Left Texas

A bit more than a month until Sine Die, and we're ready for this legislative session to be over.


Poor Garnet Coleman got gaslit.  Of course, so did all of the rest of us who thought Medicaid expansion had enough votes to pass.  I'ma go ahead and blame Dade Phelan.  You can't tell me he didn't lean on those turncoats.  In other Lege business, there were some good things that happened.


Sorry, bitches.  You're still the Ridiculous Party.  Sometimes, though, even the Donks can find a way to shit their bed a little faster.


I did a piece for Earth Day yesterday ICYMI, and the only party whose candidates will get my vote in 2022 without reservation.  The Greens are mobilizing from yesterday to May Day for their issues, local candidates this year, and statewides in 2022.



There has never been a greater urgency for their cause.  Please help by volunteering, donating, or just voting for them.


More election news, and then I'll get back to environmental updates.


Don't let the assholes win in Austin, y'all.  Because there's bigger assholes than Greg Abbott that want his job, and I'm not talking about Matthew McConaghey or Sid Miller.


Read this thread from John Arnold, the Enron billionaire and hedge fund operator, about how he sees the long-term financial prospects of fossil fuel companies changing.


Yesterday a new green project kicked off here in H-Town, and it has the support of the oil and gas companies, Rice University, and a few other corporate and national and local big shots.


Maybe this can be a good thing.  The trends are certainly promising


Some of these I'll take with a grain of salt, much as I do Joe Biden's promises, declarations, etc.


Yeah, I just had to get that in there.  Here's some social justice items.


And a couple of COVID updates.


Here's some developments on cannabis in Texas.  Perhaps drafting off the Green Party's "Earth Day to May Day" (above), Willie Nelson has declared this same period "holy".


I doubt that it's a coordinated campaign, but "Go Green" in whatever fashion suits you is a sentiment I can heartily endorse.


And in case that gave you the munchies, I have some links to share on the topic of La comida Mexicana.


I was turned down by eleven banks before I finally got a loan. Every loan officer I talked to told me the same thing: “Oh, we did a restaurant loan back in 1952 and we lost our ass. We’re never doing that again.” Finally the president of one bank did it because he liked me. He liked the ideas and thought it would be good for the bank—they had a lot of minority depositors but hadn’t made any minority loans. So I got an SBA loan for $100,000, plus I had $500 from selling all my musical instruments and equipment from the band I had been in. [...] I found a carpet place selling shag carpet pieces in different colors and we put those in the cantina. When tortilla chips fell on the carpet, we used garden rakes to get them out. Then we took the cardboard tubes from the carpet rolls, cut them in half lengthwise, and painted them to look like weathered Mexican roof tiles. [...] Mariano’s was the most expensive Mexican restaurant in Dallas when it opened. Customers would tell me, “When we go to El Chico or El Fenix, we take the kids and go early. When we go to Mariano’s, we get a babysitter, we have frozen margaritas in the cantina, an elegant dinner in the dining room, and then we go back to the cantina for flaming coffee or after-dinner drinks.” We helped break the image of cheap Mexican food in Dallas.


And some art and literature links to soothe for the weekend.


Here's an excerpt from Goodreads.

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Thursday, April 22, 2021

Earth Day and the Greens



Today's Climate Summit is being well-attended by global leaders and well-received in the corporate media, but like so many of Joe Biden's other initiatives, what he's offering is half a loaf.

And with respect to the climate crisis, we need everything in the bakery.


Platitudes R Them.  It's what Kamala brought to the ticket, it's what got Mayo Pete another job in government, and it's apparently what sustains the sycophants among the Donkey orthodoxy who are breathing easier, sleeping well, and brunching every weekend.  These compromises, like the $1400 stimmys, the still-not-enough $15 minimum wage killed by Joe Mansion and Kristen's Enema, the initiative to expand the Supreme Court that died at Nancy Pelosi's hand last week, and all the other things that would keep this sentence running on to infinity and beyond are leaving me with a very sour taste in my mouth again.

So I really didn't need to hear that Biden hasn't canceled the Enbridge #3 pipeline yet to know that there's a lot he'll give lip service to, but only so much he's willing to do.

Ed Markey and AOC have introduced Bernie Sanders' watered-down Green New Deal once more, to the expected huzzahs and hosannas.  They'll have to fight not only Pelosi and Schumer but MTG and Ted Cruz every step of the way, so it's performative, an art the Queen of Queens (and the Bronx) is burnishing of late.  Their highest hopes are by aiming low, maybe they can slip under the bar, much like old Joe himself.


I'm gonna take a hard pass on all of that.

Twenty twenty-two is the statewide cycle, which means that a whole bunch of Blue Dogs will try to show that they're not as bad as the TXGOP.  And our state media will focus on the Republican primary, because their self-fulfilling prophecy for about 30 years now has been that's the only election that matters.  Meanwhile the Permian farts methane like a small gaseous planet -- from fracking flares to uncapped, abandoned wells; the Amazon burns, our oceans are full of plastic and our air is full of carcinogens.  Does that sound like something we ought to keep doing?

If it is then you must be on the waiting list to buy a ticket on the first Elon Musk rocket flight outta here.  Good luck with that.

The pandemic, and the resulting economic slowdown, demonstrated that reducing our consumption of fossil fuels could heal the Earth.  But we're getting back to business now.  That's a death sentence.  Now a very wise man once said that repeating the same action and expecting a different result is a symptom of insanity.  So now you know why I will be voting for NO Democrats who don't indicate that they understand this simple logic.

In the case of Governor of Texas, the choice is easy.


David Collins interviewed her some time back, and she's got an active and engaged Tweet feed, so direct your questions there if you have any.

Don't expect her to get much publicity.  That's up to you and me, unless you think voting for a conservative Democrat again -- or Dishrag forbid, Matthew McConaghey -- and anticipating that person to defeat Greg Abbott is a smart idea.  (Hint: Abbott isn't going to lose a November election, no matter what that recent poll says.  If he gets upset in his primary, that Republican will win.  Which means Texas will have a farther-right-wing freak than him calling the shots.)

Even Rick Perry got re-elected running against another Republican and Kinky Friedman not so long ago.  And the other Republican, in this case, wasn't Chris Bell.  So you might as well vote for someone with some principles you believe in, as opposed to 'lesser evil', 'harm reduction', etc.  And maybe the Democrats will catch a clue and stop running GOP-Lite.

Maybe that last is too much of a stretch ...?
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