Sunday, October 03, 2021

Sunday SineManchin Funnies

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Friday, October 01, 2021

The Friyay Wrangle from Far Left Texas


Not much to cheer about down here in Deep in the Hearta, but it's almost the weekend, and we'll take what we can get.


U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of Austin will hear arguments Friday over whether to temporarily halt the Texas law, which stands as the nation’s biggest curb to the constitutional right to an abortion in a half-century.

The Justice Department has pushed for the court to act swiftly, but it is unclear how soon Pitman will decide.

The smirking General Lazy Eye must be doing.


There are marches tomorrow, here and everywhere.


As a follow-up to yesterday's Doubtful post...


The bipartisan consultantocracy force is strong with Dowd.

I will effort to make the latest redistricting takes as brief as possible, with the action item first.


This one below, by the only Republican state representative who has passed a sanity test, was yesterday's winner.


I have several Tweets regarding "Texas Republicans behaving badly in areas besides redistricting" that have piled up.


Somebody on the far right yelled "Jump", Greg Abbott replied, "How high?", and Dade Phelan said, "not this time".


Speaker Phorehead still doesn't earn a gold star from me, but it's nice to see someone occasionally saying 'no' to something.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) spent 18 percent of his PAC’s $2.2 million on political activities, spending $12,000 on Houston Astros games and $5,000 at the Cloister at Sea Island, Georgia’s top-rated luxury hotel, the report found.

CanCruz's lawsuit against the FEC, seeking to get more of his money back, has reached the SCOTUS. (Given our Citizens United world, I would expect the justices to rule in his favor.)


Round and round the grifter wheel spins.


The second- and third-tier Republinuts are... well ...


I sure hope we find out soon.

Regarding COVID:


And the battle for justice for trans children never ends.


Though it will be the children themselves who win the battle for tolerance for all.


The Boomers who ran The Rag Blog are leaving us.  And LareDOS also shared the life and times of Powell St. John, who departed last month.

Wrapping up a long, difficult, frustrating week with a few soothers.

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Thursday, September 30, 2021

A Dowdful Wrangle


Much like me -- a Democrat turned Republican in the late '70's (by Ronald Reagan, like so many other Texans) turned back to Democrat in the late 80's -- Matthew Dowd's path has been full of twists and turns.  He's more of a Democrat of convenience these days, as the GOP has gone full whacko.  Feel free to blame it on Trump, but the truth is that the slow migration began under Dowd's former idol, George W. Bush.  I know; I blogged it.  From the stolen 2000 election to 9/11 to Iraq and Afghanistan and Katrina and WMD and the 2008 housing/Wall Street meltdown,  Bush the Younger owns clear title to it all, and the chickens are still making their way home.  So when you read "former Bush strategist" as Dowd's first name, you should remember that it wasn't just Karl Rove or Karen Hughes advising the country's 2nd-worst president how to destroy the world.

Don't forget that there was a not-insignificant number of Democrats who voted for GWB in 2004 who said that he should be the one who cleans up his messes.  On that theory, apparently, Dowd might be the choice for Team Donkey.


Dowd's magical thought leadership hasn't abandoned him, either.


driftglass expands, but you get it.  Make no mistake; this isn't an endorsement of Mike Collier, another former Republican who has lost twice statewide and thinks the third time is his charm.

Undervoting this race unless there's a real for-the-people candidate.  And by that I mean one that doesn't meet the approval of people like Evan Smith and Evan "Ike Dike" Mintz.

The Texas House redistricting maps are to drop today, according to Speaker Phorehead, so I won't go as long with the Congressional cartography as I intended or wanted.  Some pearls of wisdom from those in the know, for our edification.


And the Houston Press points out the gift given to Wesley Hunt.


Here's the latest on the fraudit.


Trump is going to turn on Abbott eventually, just as he does everyone, friend and foe alike.  And I am here for it.  The 'forensic audit' (sic), as it turns out, is more fraudulent than everyone thought.


So it appears Governor Fish Lips has tried to gaslight Trump.  That should go over well in his primary fight with the freak right. LOL

Let's move on to the Lege's latest show of incompetence.


That's what happens when the lobbyists write the bills and then you vote for 'em without readin' 'em, you buncha morons.


Truthfully, I prefer stupid over corrupt.


I don't know whether I prefer corrupt to venal.  At least corruption can be prosecuted (even if these fuckers tend to skate).


The criminal and social justice updates.


To wrap, a few extra pieces of good news, and the soothers.

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Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Tongue Out Tuesday Wrangle

Panting here trying to keep up.

The new Congress maps dropped yesterday, and everybody has an opinion, analysis, and snark.


Keep in mind that these are the maiden efforts.  There will be revisions, perhaps several, and then they will be challenged in court after implementation for 2022.

At first pass my reaction was "it could have been worse".  They may eventually get that way, but these lines, while ugly and injurious to Texans of color, simply don't strike me as being the most terrible the Rethugs could have come up with. YMMV.

Reid Wilson at The Hill sees US cities -- citing Texas, Tennessee, Oregon, and Arkansas -- as being the pawns in the gerrymandering game.  Fernando Ramirez at The Texas Signal has five takeaways, with Colin Allred getting a safe seat, Vicente Gonzalez getting gutted, and the lack of a Latino/a majority district being the most significant.

Moving on to other Lege affairs.


Angela Valenzuela of the Texas Educational Equity, Politics & Policy blog posts about a new conservative website that purports to track where critical race theory is taught at US schools.

Criticalrace.org, created by (Cornell Law School professor William) Jacobson, features a state-by-state list of more than 200 colleges and universities promoting critical race theory -- which he describes as “a radical ideology that focuses on race as the key to understanding society, and objectifies people based on race.” Launched last weekend, the website was a six-month project by Legal Insurrection, the conservative blog run by Jacobson. It contains information about various schools -- including Cornell in Ithaca, where Jacobson teaches -- as well as links to critical race training activity there.

Jacobson told Fox News that people need to know that higher education “is the source of the problem.”

“It provides the ideological mothers’ milk for activists and trains the people who then go onto jobs in government and primary/secondary education and the ‘journalists’ who push this coverage,” he said.

Criminal and social injustice updates, apparently now a daily feature.


One environmental update (and it's a big one):


Tens of thousands of solar panels will line an area the size of 200 football fields and produce enough energy to power 5,000 homes. ... Houston, known for having one of the highest number of greenhouse gas emitters, will be able to offset 120 million pounds of CO2 per year through this solar farm alone.

Closing today with these.

Connor Towne O’Neill, one of the producers of the NPR podcast White Lies, discusses his book Down Along with That Devil’s Bones.

It examines the nation's reckoning with Confederate monuments through the lens of the fight over monuments to one particular figure from the Civil War: Nathan Bedford Forrest. O’Neill will speak at a virtual event with west Houston's Blue Willow Bookshop Thursday evening.

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