Occupy Congress today, Occupy the Gulf next Monday, Dec. 12

Stay afraid, Frank Luntz.

Just a day after 31 Occupy D.C. protesters were arrested after a clash with police in McPherson Square, a similar kind of demonstration is setting up camp on the National Mall. 

Hundreds are expected to converge in Washington for a "Take Back the Capitol." On Monday demonstrators including members of OurDC, the unemployed, faith leaders, labor unions and others set up what they called "The People's Camp."

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) visited the camp. Referring to the Capitol, which she said has become overrun by Tea Party members, she told a crowd it was "time to take back the 'People's House' for the people."

Andrew Duke (C), Chief of Staff to Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, tells members of Good Jobs, Great Houston and other progressive groups "occupying" Hensarling's office that the Representative will not be able to meet with them in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC, Dec. 6.

At the heart of the movement is a similar message to Occupy Wall Street. The group says it wants Congress and elected leaders to represent the 99 percent of every day Americans, instead of the wealthiest 1 percent.

Unlike the tent cities by the "Occupiers," those taking part in "Take Back the Capitol" will only work out of their units during the day. They plan to sleep in area churches at night.

The group has the following tentative plans for the week:

- Tuesday: Visit congressional offices
- Wednesday: Swarm lobbying offices on K Street
- Thursday: Speak-outs throughout the Capitol, national prayer vigil and a mass march on key congressional leaders
- Friday: Pack up and head home

Organizers say they will continue the movement at home, where they will continue to pressure their local lawmakers. 

Update: Neil has more, including an on-the scene-in-D.C. report from Houston city council candidate Amy Price.

Speaking of 'home':

In solidarity with Occupy Oakland, Occupy San Diego, Occupy LA, Occupy Portland, Occupy Tacoma, Occupy Seattle and other movements along the west coast of the United States that will shut down ports in their cities on December 12, the General Assembly of Dallas hereby declares:

On December 12, 2011, Occupy Dallas will assemble in Houston, TX.

The following message is from Occupy Oakland:

“On December 12, the occupy movements in different cities will stage mass mobilizations to march on the ports, create community pickets, and effectively shutdown the hubs of commerce, in the same fashion that Occupy Oakland shut down the Port of Oakland on November 2nd, the day of our general strike. The Oakland Port Shutdown was a historic and effective action, and the memory of that night on the port lives in the hearts of people across Oakland and around the country.”

In Houston, we will mobilize and stage a mass march by integrating Occupy Houston, Occupy Austin, Occupy San Marcos, Occupy San Antonio, Occupy Now and Occupy Texas.

We have made attempts at local demonstrations in an effort to spread awareness of the economic injustices affecting the 99%. These peaceful assemblies have been organized with the aim of petitioning our government for a redress of our grievances. On a national level, the response to our protest has often included excessive force and unnecessary violence perpetrated by police departments, with thousands of citizens unlawfully arrested.

Occupy Dallas would like to urge other movements in Texas and the surrounding states that wish to participate in the Occupy the Gulf Coast action to join with Occupy Houston before December 12.

Developing ...

Kristi Thibaut and Jolanda Jones for Houston City Council

A solid 14,000 Houstonians have voted early in person or by mail in the December 10 runoff election for Houston city council. My post isn't likely to move any molehills, much less mountains, with respect to turnout or endorsement influence. Here it is anyway.

Kristi Thibaut, At Large #2: Let's begin by pointing out that Thibaut's opponent, Pastor Andrew Burks, is not only following the Gene Locke "Republicans plus African Americans" electoral strategy but also has a few other, shall we say, non-traditional items in his background, including a second arrest for DWI in 2010. From the Chron's take on the race last week:

Andrew Burks Jr. is harder to pin down. He's a lifelong black Democrat who ran once for chairman of the county party, yet he scored an A on the Texas Conservative Review's questionnaire and had the publication's endorsement for the general election when there were 10 candidates in the running.

Burks is endorsed by the (Harris) county Republican Party. Despite a claim on his Web site that he is endorsed by a former At-Large 5 candidate Laurie Robinson, she said she has not endorsed him.

[...]

Burks said he cannot remember how many times he has run for office. Chronicle research indicates this is his 12th run for public office and his seventh for a council seat. He also has run for state representative, Congress, county school board and party chairman. Two years ago, he took incumbent Sue Lovell to a runoff. Lovell, who is term-limited, endorses Thibaut.

[...]

Burks was under house arrest for 40 days last year following his second DWI conviction. Burks said he had not been drinking nor driving, but that he had been prescribed improper medication at a Veterans Affairs facility, where he was in a parked car at the time of his arrest.

Charles expands:

As a point of comparison, here’s the 2009 runoff overview story. The reason Burks has been endorsed by the GOP despite his “lifelong Democrat” status is likely because he welcomed the endorsement of Steven Hotze in the 2009 runoff. There are plenty of reasons not to vote for Andrew Burks, but that one would be sufficient for me. Beyond that, I just don’t know what to make of the guy. Like Griff, the impression I get is of a guy who’s running to run, not because he has some idea of what he wants to do if he wins. His finance reports are a mess, and he says ridiculous things – in that 2009 story, he talks about a “conspiracy of silence” that he can’t articulate. None of this is to say that he can’t win – he can, and he might. I just don’t know what we’ll get if he does.

The reason Burks might win is that he's black, and because another African American, Jolanda Jones, is also in an At Large runoff. Burks and Jones are as far apart philosophically as Jones and her runoff opponent Jack Christie, but for some voters, sadly, that won't matter. Also driving African American voters to the polls on December 10 is a runoff in District B between Alvin Byrd and Jerry Davis, and Republicans are getting boosted by District A's runoff between far-right incumbent Brenda Stardig and her farthest-right challenger Helena Brown.

Neil has more on Burks' bald-faced duplicity.

It's embarrassing that Burks even made it into the runoff with so many other qualified candidates, including a more qualified African American woman, Roz Shorter. It will be even more embarrassing if he wins.

Thibaut, by contrast, is honest, hard-working, and progressive. She was my co-endorsement last month out of ten challengers for the seat. She deserves to be elected. Burks does not. Simple as that.

Jolanda Jones, At Large #5: Again, a simple choice made even easier by Christie's smear mailer, which arrived in my mailbox on the day after Thanksgiving and even quoted Texas Liberal's Neil Aquino from the post in which he endorsed Jones. Hard to twist someone's words any tighter than that. That's the Republican way, though.

My fear is that the fate of Jones and Thibaut are somewhat linked. Either Democrats and progressives will get themselves to the poll to vote for them, or they'll get overcome by guaranteed GOP turnout. As for Thibaut, there's a double negative: there won't be many tickets split Thibaut/Christie, but likely to be many that go Burks/Jones.

As in the general election, I can offer no endorsement in District B, and because the only Democrat running in District A did not make that runoff, I can easily decline choosing between Stardig and Brown ... unlike Mayor Parker.

Update: Bob Ryan, the sensible Republican who ran in AL#5 against Christie and Jones, endorses the councilwoman for re-election.

“While I may not agree with all of Councilmember Jones’ positions, she is one of the few at City Hall that will stand up for the downtrodden, even when it’s one against fourteen.”

Ryan and Chris Bell trump the hell out of Bill White and Peter Brown IMO.

The cowardice of the Texas Democratic Party (or how I turned Bluish-Green)

This is the post some of you have been asking me about. Casual political observers uninterested in the inside-baseball nature of internecine state party politics can skip to the end if you want the larger message.

Two weeks ago the Senate District Executive Committee of the Texas Democratic Party met in quarterly plenary session and cast some votes for resolutions to be placed on the March 2012 primary ballot. Those resolutions included the adoption of casino gambling in Texas (which was the only one the SDEC approved), support of marriage equality, abolishment of the death penalty, decriminalization of marijuana, and passage of the DREAM Act. You may read Karl-Thomas Musselman's live-blog of the session here for background and discussion prior to the voting. Most of you who have made it to this point are likely quite familiar with the proceedings, so I'll skip the details. As more backstory, I used to attend these meetings regularly and even live-blogged them myself a time or two before the rise of Twitter made such efforts obsolete. I long ago tired of the meetings, observing them as a glorified kaffeklatsche for retirees, sycophants, starfuckers, and budding politicos who were mostly uninterested in actually advancing Democratic policies or even helping Democrats get elected. It became apparent that election to the SDEC was more of a resume' enhancement or a legacy-burnishing or some similar ego stroke to the individual committee person; most of whom are in their dotage, some of the younger ones in a quest for actual political office.

That's not to say that the SDEC is entirely useless. Just mostly. What they are entirely is irrelevant (thanks for that observation to my friend Tom G).

A little historical digression is in order.

Feuding between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic Party is as old as the hills. It's why Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat for President in 1948. It's one of the reasons why John F. Kennedy came to Texas in November of 1963; to mitigate the quarreling between Gov. John Connally (another Democrat better remembered as a Republican these days) and Sen. Ralph Yarborough (an actual progressive). Many of these squabbles had their roots in civil rights. Here's an excerpt from Thurmond's Wiki page:

In 1948, President Harry S. Truman desegregated the U.S. Army, proposed the creation of a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, supported the elimination of state poll taxes, and supported drafting federal anti-lynching laws. Thurmond became a candidate for President of the United States on the third party ticket of the States' Rights Democratic Party (aka Dixiecrats). It split from the national Democrats over what was perceived as federal intervention in the segregation practices of the Southern states, which, among other issues, had largely disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites by constitutional amendments and electoral requirements from 1890 to 1910. Thurmond carried four states and received 39 electoral votes. One 1948 speech, met with cheers by supporters, included the following (audio at the link above):

I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.

Continuing on the timeline and moving back to Texas, Yarborough -- the most progressive politician ever elected in Texas IMHO (RIP Jim Mattox and Oscar Mauzy and Ann Richards) -- was defeated by a conservative Democrat named Lloyd Bentsen in 1970. Bentsen a conservative, you say, with mouth agape?

The campaign came in the wake of Yarborough's politically hazardous votes in favor of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and his opposition to the Vietnam War. Bentsen made Yarborough's opposition to the war a major issue. His television advertising featured video images of rioting in the streets at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, implying that Yarborough was associated with the rioters. While this strategy was successful in defeating Yarborough, it caused long-term damage to Bentsen's relationship with liberals in his party.

Bentsen's campaign and his reputation as a conservative Democrat served to alienate him not only from supporters of Ralph Yarborough, but from prominent national liberals as well. Indeed, during the 1970 Senate race, the Keynesian economist John Kenneth Galbraith endorsed George H. W. Bush, arguing that if Bentsen were elected to the Senate, he would invariably become the face of a new, more conservative Texas Democratic Party and that the long-term interests of Texas liberalism demanded Bentsen's defeat. Nevertheless, later that year, Bentsen went on to win the general election when he was pitted against Congressman and future President George H. W. Bush. On election night, Bentsen beat Bush convincingly.

Closer to modern times, in 2006 and with a slate of populist statewide Democratic candidates almost unmatched in Texas Democratic Party history (mostly because none of the conservative, establishment Dems wanted to risk losing) a group of us like-minded progressives set out to transform the SDEC by electing some of our own and others screened by our group to the committee. That effort got sabotaged by several turncoats whom we supported. Yes, we progressives got played by a bunch of schemers who about-faced on their progressive not-so-bonafides. Among the evidence was their support for Boyd Richie, a small-town conservative as chairman of the TDP. And making sure he got re-elected in subsequent years and so on.

Not electing Glen Maxey TDP chair in 2006 was, in retrospect, another pivotal turning point missed; one more opportunity lost to move the TDP back from the right and more toward the left. To draw the distinction between the two parties clearly enough that the lowest of low-information voters could understand: that only one party was interested in helping the little guys and not the fat cats (or as we say today, the 99% and not the 1%, messaging the Occupy movement has helpfully provided).

Except that the Texas Democratic Party, as represented by the majority of the members of the SDEC, really aren't interested in doing that. Not if you're homosexual, or Latino, and rarely and only occasionally if you're African-American. Not so much if you oppose the death penalty, believe that marijuana should be decriminalized, or refuse to participate in the demonization of the economic refugees of our southern neighbor, or even enable their children to attend college as the residents of Texas and US citizens that they are.

The vast majority of the SDEC in short are moral cowards. They are too scared of Republican backlash against rural and conservative Democratic office-holders and candidates to stand up for the principles of social justice that the party platform has continually espoused. In other words they talk good and walk lousy.

When the game is on the line, the Texas Democratic Party's so-called leaders turn tail and run into the locker room to take a dump, missing the game-changing play on purpose. Because they are too afraid to risk losing, they keep losing. And they just don't seem to get that.

Now to be clear, it's easy to support progressive Democrats; I just organized a meeting yesterday in Houston for one. It's not so easy -- and growing increasingly difficult -- to support a party, and some of its candidates, who aren't.

This kind of institutionalized timidity just drives me farther and farther away from the Democratic Party as a 'member of the tribe'. Which is why it's a good thing there's a political party on the ballot in 2012 that stands for something and is willing to stand up for it when push comes to shove.

I encourage Texas progressives and independents who feel as disgusted with those Texas Democrats who refuse to go on record supporting progressive values to consider supporting a party and its candidates who will. Supporting Green Party candidates is, at this point, perhaps the last chance that progressives will ever have in order to get the Democratic Party's attention with respect to making progress in Texas. In the proper direction, not the right one.

Related reading:

jobsanger: Texas Democratic Leaders Vote to Have No Beliefs

Juanita Jean -- whose husband serves on the SDEC and voted in favor of all of the resolutions: The Resolutions (UPDATED) (REUPDATED)

Mean Rachel: What Texas Democrats Can Learn From Aaron Pena

Collin County Democratic Blog News: The Texas Democratic Party Needs a New Direction. Besides its other cogent observations and suggestions, this post has an excellent summary of the history of the conservatives in the Texas Democratic Party.

The Weekly Wrangle

As it brings you this week's blog round-up, the Texas Progressive Alliance thinks that if Herman Cain had just married all those women, he could be where Newt Gingrich is today.

Off the Kuff provides a little perspective about redistricting and the political outcome of the ongoing litigation over it.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson says it's time for a new direction for the Texas Democratic Party: A tremendous opportunity to create a new Democratic Party in Texas.

McBlogger says that Judge Jed Rakoff threw a big wrench into the sweetheart deals some of the banks have been getting from the SEC.

Bay Area Houston has the information if you want to contact the judge about state representative Joe Driver's sentencing.

Refinish69 at Doing My Part for the Left has a few suggestions since The Holiday Season is Here!

BossKitty at TruthHugger is more comfortable with crop circles than the Frankenstein-like Tea Party the Koch Brothers created: Why the Tea Party is like a Crop Circle.

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw summaries the choices presented by the Republican presidental hopefuls in An OOPS, a Serial Flipper Flopper, Adulterers, a Sourpuss and a Scared Spin Doctor. It would be funnier if it weren't all true.

Mitt Romney's path to the GOP nomination got considerably rockier in the past week, and that was before Herman Cain failed to deliver in 30 minutes or less. The rise of Newt Gingrich is however a dilemma for conservative fundamentalist Christians, as PDiddie at Brains and Eggs observes. Can they get behind a nominee who believes that marriage should only be between a man and a woman who does not have cancer?

Neil at Texas Liberal took a walk along some railroad tracks in Houston. On his walk, Neil encountered both solid and metaphorical aspects of life.

Sunday Funnies

600,000 Texas voters may not have photo ID

That's the entire population of Vermont. Or Wyoming. That's just one of about a dozen salient points in this piece by Rep. Rafael Anchia at NewsTaco, and it's so good I wish to repost it here in its entirety. Emphasis his.

November has been month full of “oops” moments for Texas Republicans.

Not only were their illegal maps redrawn by a San Antonio Federal court last week, but lost in the redistricting news was the story about the refusal by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to pre-clear the strict photo ID legislation that Texas Republicans passed during the 2011 legislative session.  Since July of this year, the DOJ has twice asked the Texas Secretary of State’s office (SOS) for additional information, including the number of registered voters who may be unable to comply with its requirements.  At issue are about 600,000 registered Texas voters who may not have a state-issued license or ID.  If the SOS does not provide the data, implementation of the bill can be halted.

For those not familiar with the term “pre-clearance,” it means that, under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, changes to Texas’ election laws must be reviewed to ensure that the laws do not have discriminatory effects.  Immediately following the end of last session, several voting rights advocacy groups sent letters to the DOJ stating that the new law will disenfranchise many Texas voters, including seniors, college students, the disabled, and ethnic and racial minorities.  The restrictive nature of the bill defies common sense.  For example, a college student in Texas who holds an out-of-state driver’s license, but is registered to vote on campus will not be able to use that driver’s license or even their college photo ID to vote.  Even worse, a Korean war veteran who no longer drives and does not have a government-issued photo ID such as a valid passport or concealed handgun license will not be allowed to vote with their voter registration card, despite the fact that his service to his country was supposed to ensure that very right for his fellow Americans.

I have always argued that any photo ID law contain vote-saving provisions ensuring no duly-registered Texas voter is left behind.  In Idaho, among the reddest of red states, the photo ID law allows duly registered citizens without photo ID to issue an affidavit under penalty of perjury in order to vote.  In Florida, the Republican photo ID law allows voters without photo ID to cast a ballot that undergoes a signature match (like we do with mail-in ballots in Texas).  During the debate on the House floor, I offered amendments based on these models, but they were rejected.

At the risk of saying, “I told you so,” it comes as no surprise to those of us who predicted that the DOJ would take issue with the more onerous provisions of this legislation.  During the house debate, I also offered an amendment that would have delayed enactment of the strict photo ID law until the SOS had furnished the very type of data that the DOJ is requesting today.  Disturbingly, no voter impact analysis had been conducted and, during the debate on this bill, I introduced studies suggesting that between 150,000 and 500,000 registered voters in Texas do not have the kind of photo ID that would be required to vote.  As it turns out, I was too conservative in my estimates, and in fact we now know that up to 600,000 Texans may not be able to cast a regular ballot under the new law.

You would think that, before pushing for this legislation, the authors would have asked how the bill adversely affects Texans’ right to vote.  What was their acceptable threshold for disenfranchisement?  Was it 100, 100,000, or 600,000 Texas voters?  To put 600,000 voters in context-that’s about the number of people who live in each of the states of Vermont and Wyoming.   It seemed as though Texas Republicans never really wanted to answer that question.  Despite the studies predicting that the bill would adversely affect the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of Texans, undoubtedly among them thousands of Texas Republicans, the authors of the bill simply ignored these inconvenient data points.

Some have suggested that Texas Republicans knew about the 600,000 voters all along and this is a cynical and manipulative ploy to maintain partisan control of state government.  I have a great deal of respect for many of my colleagues, including the bill authors, and would like to think otherwise, but the restrictive nature of the bill just doesn’t make sense.

What has become clear to me is that this legislation is not intended to deal with voter fraud — in fact, the only kind of voter fraud that regularly occurs, mail-in ballot fraud, is not touched by the photo ID legislation.  A multi-year investigation by the Texas Attorney General has borne out that impersonation of a voter at the ballot box is extremely rare in the state of Texas.  The real problem is not voter impersonation, it’s that too few people are voting.  In the 2010 mid-term general elections, Texas was dead last among the 50 states in registered voter participation.

As legislators, we need to ensure that fundamental individual rights are protected.  If the DOJ does not pre-clear the strict photo-ID bill, we will get another shot at this legislation.  And if we do, we need to act carefully and can’t ignore the 600,000.

Romney's path to the GOP nomination

... seems considerably more difficult today. And perhaps impossible.

He can't win the Iowa caucuses, now just a month away, and he may not win NH by much, or even at all. Then comes SC and FL.

But the larger point has more to do with whomever the Republicans select as their presidential standard-bearer, be it Romney or Newt Gingrich. A vital part of the conservative coalition, the Christian fundamentalists, increasingly have no candidate to turn to. Their Chosen One was Rick Perry, and he was replaced by Herman Cain as Flavor of the Month in October.

Personally my observation of the evangelicals is that they are less prone to bald-faced hypocrisy than the rest of the party. That translates into not 'forgiving a man who has repented his sins'. It seems that some can and some can't; they're divided. Never mind Romney's flip-floppery on every issue, it's Newt's nuanced positions on immigration and abortion that have them flummoxed.

For those who will never go to Mitt -- he's not a Christian, of course -- and who can't support Newt the Adulterer, it's a real quandary. The Tony Perkins/Richard Land caucus and its members have the potential to be the most disillusioned come next November. Just imagine how the Charismatics will react if the eventual nominee picks an anchor baby like Marco Rubio as a running mate.

Two hard-bitten conservatives on the ticket, likewise, alienates the "moderate" wing of the GOP, which has gone on the attack against Gingrich in recent days (note Karl Rove's consistent pimping of Romney on Fox News, to which even the likes of Michael Berry is reacting badly).

Either the Tea P is going to be very unhappy if Romney does stumble to the nom, or the establishment gets sour-pussed with the selection of Gingrich. Romney and a TeaBagger as V-P is nothing but a replay of McCain-Palin. Newt is NOT going to take a Jon Huntsman or Gary Johnson ... even though that would be a formidable matchup. He'll take a Latino/a and gamble that his softer immigration stance coupled with a brown token will win him Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, and some other blue-in-'08 states. This political calculus disregards the dampening effect a (for example) Gingrich-Rubio ticket would have in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina ...

And this is exactly the kind of division between conservative factions that not only makes it increasingly likely that Obama wins, and wins easily*, but also helps Democrats down the ballot. And it could present the Democratic Party with electoral opportunities in places they would not normally exist even in a presidential election season ... such as in the South.

Maybe even, heaven forfend, Texas.

* no discounts factored in for worsening economic conditions, terrorist attacks, bad reactions to natural disasters, or fresh scandals

Update: Additional reading.

Can social conservatives forgive Gingrich’s messy personal past? Note this article's focus on the gender gap between evangelical women and men with regard to forgiving the Speaker's sins.

The Weekly First Frost Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance welcomes wearing a coat and gloves, condensing exhalation, and the opening of candidate filing season (SCOTUS willing) as it brings you this week's roundup.

Noted "redistricting analyst" Off the Kuff analyzed the new court-drawn Congressional map.

Lightseeker takes on the question of where OWS is now and what its future might hold. Check it out at Texas Kaos: OWS Meets Mass Democracy - The Need for a Narrative.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the recent failure (or was it?) of the so-called "supercommittee": Failure was a success.

Bay Area Houston wonders about Rep Joe Driver's felony and his $57,000 annual pension.

BossKitty at TruthHugger cannot stomach the ongoing civilian casualty toll in wars America propagates. Money talks, accountability walks. Quit electing politicians who answer to the military-industrial lobby and want to throw the rest of us under the bus: US and NATO Allies too sloppy for war.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is ashamed of the Texas Democratic Party. The only thing going for the party is that they're not Republicans.

Just one year ago, Texas Republicans were laughing all over themselves celebrating their super-majority in the House with the defections of Aaron Pena and Allan Ritter. They're not laughing any longer after two federal judges redrew the maps that erased all of their gains from 2010. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs notes that political fortunes can rise and fall just like the stock market, especially when pigs turn into hogs.

Neil at Texas Liberal noted that Occupy Houston published a newspaper. Occupy Houston and Occupy efforts across the nation are working hard and staying creative to make certain that the movement is here for the long haul.

WhosPlayin wrote about a Tea Party candidate for city council in Lewisville who is running on a platform of "rule of law" and "transparency", but who utterly failed at both in his campaign finance reports. But hey, at least this mistake is not as bad as his $56 million overstatement of the city's debt.

Sunday Slightly Funnies

"Those that make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
-- JFK

Texas GOP fruits of 2010 turn bitter

Texas Republicans in happier times.

Hard to believe that picture was taken just a year ago, isn't it?

That was the scene last December after the Red Tea Tide swept Republicans into a near-super majority in the Texas House, which Aaron Pena and Allan Ritter then gracelessly provided with their defections just days after the election.

Today, their grins have been turned into grimaces, their giddiness to dismay, their joy into depression.

Oh, they'll still be a majority in the statehouse (and nearly a super in the Texas Senate). All the new boundaries drawn by the three federal judges really do is restore Texas Democrats' electoral opportunities in 2012 to about the same 82-68 split that existed after 2008's election.

But the federal court's action -- specifically the majority of one Democrat and one Republican, both Latino -- virtually reverses the historic gains the TXGOP made in '10 ... which is why Aaron Pena is quitting, and why Greg Abbott is squalling like a colicky baby.

Earlier Friday, Abbott slammed changes proposed by the same federal panel to the congressional map in a legal filing, claiming the court overstepped its bounds. Abbott accused it of “undermining the democratic process.” [...]

“A court's job is to apply the law, not to make policy,” lawyers for the state wrote in their filing. “A federal court lacks constitutional authority to interfere with the expressed will of the state Legislature unless it is compelled to remedy a specific, identifiable violation of law.”

Abbott also said he would ask for the court to stay its congressional plan if it is not substantially changed.

If the judges refuse, Abbott said, he'll take the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now let's get the opinion of a competent lawyer.

“You have to show irreparable harm, and it's really pretty hard to show irreparable harm in an election,” said Michael Li, an elections law expert who has been closely tracking the redistricting trial. “The state's argument is the same argument that Democrats tried to use in 2004,” which the Supreme Court rejected.

While anything's possible with the partisan and blatantly unethical conservatives on the SCOTUS, expect them to be slightly outnumbered by the remaining five prudent jurists on the basis of the precedent Li cites.

Look again at the photo at the top of this post.

Pena is out on his fat ass, Abbott (left, lower) continues to disgrace himself with woeful legal strategies, Rick Perry (rear, over Pena's shoulder) has of course shit his presidential bed, and Joe Straus (right) will draw another conservative challenge to his speakership -- but likely survive it. Only David Dewhurst (over Pena's other shoulder) still has a little light shining on his political prospects, and that may yet be endangered by the Teabagger insurgent Ted Cruz in March's primary for the US Senate.

Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to heat up some turkey and dressing leftovers to have with my heaping bowl of schadenfreude.

Update: Rachel, not as mean as she could be, points out that Democrats need to focus on what matters, and that is electing Democrats who will stand up for Democratic principles.

We see examples of people unwilling to fight for things that Democrats should be fighting for all too often and make no real effort to replace them with people who are willing to fight. We saw an instance of it just last week in the SDEC's prioritization of protecting Democratic incumbents over civil rights; a decision so short-sighted that it makes one wonder what value there is in a committee that is more concerned about the state of the Democratic Party today than the state of Texas for future generations.

As previously referenced, I will have something to say about that as soon as the warm glow of thankfulness wears off.

"What's for dessert?" Funnies

"If you want to make Joe Barton wet his pants ..."

" ... just mention Chet Edwards." -- Matt Angle

The three-judge panel gave Texas Democrats an early Christmas present in the form of revised Congressional maps, and there's a lot to be thankful for.

The new map will likely give Democrats 13 House seats in the state, up from the nine seats they currently hold. It is also an improvement from the 10 likely seats Democrats would have gotten from the districts into which the Republican map had packed their constituents. [...]

The big winner in this proposal is Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas): the GOP map had tossed him into a heavily Hispanic district stretching from his home in Austin down to San Antonio. The new map draws a safely Democratic but not overwhelmingly Hispanic Austin district.

Rep. Francisco "Quico" Canseco (R-Texas) has an uphill battle to win reelection in his newly drawn seat. Canseco won a Democratic-leaning, heavily Hispanic seat running from San Antonio along the border almost to El Paso, and Republicans had sought to shore him up. The new plan makes the seat even more Democratic and Hispanic than the seat he currently holds.

Democrats are also dominant in two of the four new districts the state has gotten because of its population growth: a heavily minority district in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and a new heavily Hispanic seat in South Texas.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) could also be potentially vulnerable, according to Democrats. His district remains GOP-leaning but would have given President Obama about 45 percent of its vote. One candidate they'd love to see run: Former Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas), who represented part of Barton's new district when he was in the statehouse years ago.

Sissy Farenthold's Republican grandson is a goner:

Say sayonara to Blake "Ducky Pajamas" Farenthold in CD-27, the Republican who knocked off Solomon Ortiz in 2010. The 27th district is now 80.6% Hispanic and went for Obama in 2008.

One of the four new districts, in the Metroplex, will certainly be blue:

Note that CD33 is now a majority-minority seat in Tarrant County -- BOR notes that State Rep. Marc Veasey, one of the plaintiffs and strong fighters in these suits, has already indicated his interest in running for it. He’s already got an opponent if so -- a press release from Fort Worth City Council member Kathleen Hicks that announced her entry into the CD33 sweepstakes, hit my inbox about ten minutes after the publication of the new map. PoliTex confirms both of these. One way or another, though, it sounds like sayonara to Roger Williams.

Paging Nick Lampson:

CD14 is on the Gulf coast and includes parts of Brazoria, Galveston and Jefferson Counties. The district was formerly represented by Ron Paul, who has announced he won't run for reelection. While President Obama won just 41.9 percent of the vote, downballot candidates like Sam Houston (Texas Supreme Court) won 47.3 percent of the vote. Much of this district was represented by former Democratic Congressman Nick Lampson.

See the maps here for the state and here from Greg for the Houston area. Kuffner and Burnt Orange and the LSP, all linked above, have greater detail from their various perspectives. Stace picked up AG Abbott's fresh glass of whine, the Statesman details the Doggett-Castro separation, and the TexTrib adds a little more.

Here's to a very Happy Thanksgiving for everyone who isn't a Republican. *clink*

Blogging giblets

Since Turkey Day came two days early for the Republicans, this year the Thanksgiving holiday is unofficially Festivus for the rest of us in November.

-- Tune out Black Friday and absolutely avoid its creeping back into Thanksgiving Day. If you must buy anything, buy it from a local merchant and not a corporation. That's an Occupy Wall Street objective even the most dense conservative ought to be able to understand.

-- I've written a scathing post on the cowardly actions of the Texas Democratic Party's Senate District Executive Committee, but I'm not going to put it up until next week (I'm trying to get in the holiday spirit). I may even temper its flames somewhat while it simmers. Nah, I probably won't.

-- I previously thought that Annise Parker was going to let HPD bust a move on Occupy Houston, but I don't think that any more. I believe now it is her strategy to allow officers to annoy the encampment with their obnoxious tarps-are-tents enforcement, hoping the protesters eventually get worn out and go away. This is likely what mayors in other cities are doing, taking a Thanksgiving week break and seeing if the weather -- cold, wet, or both -- will take care of their 'problem'. Pepper spray in the face just doesn't say Christmas, after all.

-- More after the holiday, somewhat regular posting on the weekend. Be nice to your Republican family members; most of them can't help it.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy Thanksgiving as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff takes a look at the electoral opportunities of the new court-drawn legislative map.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson links to the results of a Texas AFT survey that the GOP's plan to defund public education is working as designed: Survey says....Texas public schools are in trouble.

Bay Area Houston shows that while Rick Perry incorrectly claims Obama calls Americans lazy, his major donors are writing op-eds calling Americans lazy.

BossKitty at TruthHugger writes about political marketers that target the uninformed and disinterested voter with spicy one liners to vote for their candidate. The season of disinformation is upon us again: National Treasures and American History on eBay.  And because the campaign gun debate is so twisted that the issue is totally missed: Lock and Load, Twist and Shoot.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that Rick Perry's success story means food insecurity for you.

The Texas Republican overreach in both redistricting and photo ID got slapped down hard by the feds. And the corresponding whining was louder than any two alleycats fighting over a female. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs celebrated Good Friday twice this year.

nytexan at BlueBloggin is disgusted with the police brutality and right wing lies of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Every day that OWS continues, more and more lobbyists, corporate giants and wrong-headed politicians reveal just how in bed they are with each other. It also reveals how para-military the police have become: Police Brutality And Corporate Lies Will Not Stop Occupy Wall Street.

Libby Shaw gets us up to date with the onging diaster that is Rick Perry's presidental aspirations this week. Check it out at TexasKaos: Rick Perry's Multiple Train Wrecks.

Neil at Texas Liberal ran his yearly how-to-thaw-a-turkey post. The post also offers links to cooking up a veggie Thanksgiving as suggested by PETA. Neil hopes everybody has a nice and safe Thanksgiving.

McBlogger takes a look at some 'conservatives' whose relationship with the truth could best be described as 'flexible'.

Sunday Funnies

And this last one is just for Matt (see his comment in the prior post):

Greg Abbott scolds himself

It was his strategy to bypass the DOJ and pre-clearance by going directly to court with the Republican redistricting overgrab. He thought the two GOP judges would be in their corner.

He was wildly wrong, and now he's bitching about the outcome.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office on Friday slammed an interim redistricting map proposed by a three-judge panel in San Antonio, saying the federal jurists overstepped their bounds in redrawing House and Senate district lines that could cost Republicans a half-dozen seats next year.

"Contrary to (a) basic principle of federalism, the proposed interim redistricting plan consistently overturns the Legislature's will where no probability of a legal wrong has been identified," Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, said in a statement.

The three-judge panel had to create the interim maps for the 2012 election because a trial in Washington, D.C., on whether the redistricting plans approved by the Texas Legislature this year conform to the U.S. Voting Rights Act will not take place until after candidates have to file for office.

Greg Abbott's view of the law is so warped that it consistently makes him a laughingstock.

Update: Burka.

Republican sources tell me that there is disgruntlement toward the attorney general among Republican House members. Their gripe is: The attorney general’s office had a “lackadaisical” attitude toward the case; or, alternatively, “Abbott didn’t have his A team on this.”

Abbott’s ballyhooed strategy was an attempt to win the case through forum-shopping. The AG’s legal team thought they had figured out how to wire around the Obama Justice Department, which was to choose the option of taking the case before a three-judge federal court in the District of Columbia and bypass a trial by moving for summary judgment on all the maps in controversy. The problem is, the two Bush appointees on the panel didn’t take a partisan position. [...]

One unexpected problem Abbott encountered at the San Antonio trial is that one of his own expert witness–John Alford, a political science professor at Rice University– went south on him. Alford testified that he would have done things differently from the Legislature’s congressional redistricting map that Abbott was defending...

I didn't realize how fundamentally incompetent and corrupt the man was until I worked on the campaign of the man who ran against him in 2006. Of all of the profoundly ignorant, nakedly raw partisan schmucks running the state of Texas -- from Rick Perry, John Cornyn, David Dewhurst, Kay Bailey, and David Dewhurst trickling all the way down to Susan Combs, Jerry Patterson, and Todd Staples -- Greg Abbott is the worst. And the most dangerous.

You can be certain that Abbott will do everything he can to subvert the will of the federal court which slapped away his party's overzealous gambit for permanent super-majority status.

On the other hand, one of the conservative cabal's junior partner in Houston, Paul Bettencourt, gets it. Almost:

"I don't think the Democratic Party could have hoped to have a plan drawn like this if they controlled had been able to participate in any meaningful way at the Legislature," said Paul Bettencourt, a former executive with the state Republican Party and former Harris County tax assessor.

Fixed it for ya, Quitter. That's pretty much what I said yesterday.

This will be how the statewide Republicans will run their campaigns in 2012: completely against Washington D.C., much like Rick Perry conducted his 2010 re-election. 'EEEvil, evil feds want to tell Texans how to live', blah blah blah. Dewhurst is already doing it. The "Obama/socialist,DemocRAT" rants will only get louder.

That tea is weak. And stale.

The Republican party declares that 'government doesn't work' and then demonstrates its premise on a daily basis. No jobs bill. No budget deal. No tax increases. No, no, all the time no.

No voting without your photo id, no pensions for anybody unless we can let Wall Street get their hands on it, no money for schools and teachers, no money for Planned Parenthood's birth preventive education.

And you get even more 'No' if your skin is brown, you are female, homosexual, and/or you're not a Christian.

But there's plenty of tax breaks for oil and gas companies who foul the environment and lots of great deals for crony capitalists. The better friend you are of Rick Perry's, or the more money you can give to Republicans, the better off you will be. It's the classic example of the 1% waging war on the 99%.

And the only reason to keep the focus on abortion and gay rights is to keep the ignorant and the poverty-stricken distracted. Distraction is, in fact, the primary tool in their toolbox. A president misleads America about the costs to get a prescription drug bill passed, paying off Big Pharma cronies to the tune of $1 trillion dollars? Republicans snooze. President exaggerates intelligence to fool Americans into going to war against Iraq, costing 4,800 American soldiers' lives and over $800 billion? GOP snores, snorts, and rolls over.

President accelerates a loan guarantee to Solyndra, loan goes bad costing $500 million? The tried-and-true faux outrage erupts.

You like this? Want more of it? Keep voting for these vile Republicans.

Texas Republican overreach slapped down hard by feds

The maps drawn for the 2012 elections by the three-judge panel are a huge win, and in some cases are eye-popping.

Democrats could gain a half-dozen seats in the Texas House under an interim redistricting map a federal court released Thursday. [...]

The biggest changes in the proposed Texas House map, which was endorsed by two of the three judges meeting in San Antonio, appear to be focused in the Houston area and could cost the Republicans as many as three seats. Rep. Beverly Woolley's district was largely combined into Rep. Jim Murphy's, Rep. Ken Legler's reconfigured district is heavily Hispanic and Rep. Sarah Davis' new district was won in 2008 by President Barack Obama.

The two judges would also give Democratic state Reps. Hubert Vo and Scott Hochberg districts to run in, undoing the Legislature's combination of their districts. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a legal filing that combining the two districts violated the Voting Rights Act because it would reduce opportunities for minority representation.

Several Republicans got paired. Harvey K:

Under the House map proposed by the San Antonio judges, 12 districts will pair incumbents -- all Republican on Republican contests with the exception of two districts pairing an R with a D. No Democrats are paired in the interim map. It should also be noted that several incumbents on this list have either announced they are not running for re-election or running for a different office.

HD 2: Cain (R), Flynn (R)

HD 21: Hamilton (R), White (R)

HD 32: Hunter (R), Morrison (R)

HD 33: Scott (R), Torres (R)

HD 69: Hardcastle (R), Lyne (R)

HD 80: Aliseda (R), King, T. (D)

HD 85: Chisum (R), Landtroop (R)

HD 91: Hancock (R), Nash (R)

HD 109: Anderson, R. (R), Giddings (D)

HD 113: Burkett (R), Driver (R)

HD 114: Hartnett (R), Sheets (R)

HD 133: Murphy (R), Woolley (R)

Meanwile, here are the open House districts under the proposed interim House map:

HD 3, HD 14, HD 30, HD 35, HD 43, HD 57, HD 68, HD 88, HD 93, HD 101, HD 106, HD 107 and HD 136

Warrne Chisum is running for Railroad Commissioner, Will Hartnett and Beverly Woolley are retiring, and Joe Driver caught a felony indictment, so this isn't as bad as it looks at first blush for the Repugs.

More from Greg:

Some particulars of interest: Woolley’s old district (she’s retiring) is essentially folded into Jim Murphy’s. Scott (Hochberg) and Hubert (Vo) each have their own district. (Ken) Legler is toast. (Dwayne) Bohac would go another decade with a bullseye on his back. And HD134 (Sarah Davis) got bluer on the Obama numbers, so it looks like that one could come back to the D column. HD136 is outsourced to Waller County, so it’s a 24-district map for the county.

Even more impressive is a just-below 50-50 district in Fort Bend County that’s over 30% Asian. Beyond that, I’ve seen at least a couple of WD40 districts that might be regained. No time to get into Dallas, but I’m hearing three seats from there could come back.

And Wendy Davis gets her Senate district back.

All three judges agreed on what changes to make the Texas Senate map, essentially restoring the district represented by Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, to the configuration it had when she ran for election in 2008.

The redistricting plan transformed Davis' district, which was seen as heavily competitive, into a Republican-dominated district.

Frankly, I'm slack-jawed over these changes. If the Texas House had included Democrats in the cartographic process during the last session, the D's could not have done themselves this much good.

And Photo ID skids out of the turn and slams into the wall, bursting into flames:

The Texas voter ID law, one of Gov. Rick Perry's top priorities during the 2011 Legislature, has been stalled by the U.S. Justice Department, which is insisting on demographic information about voters that state election officials say is virtually impossible to provide.

Texas Republicans expressed dismay Thursday after Justice Department officials said they need voter information about race and ethnicity before they can approve the controversial law, which is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2012.

The ruling raises the possibility that the law will not be in place by the March 6 primary.

Information that Texas election officials have provided "is incomplete and does not enable us to determine that the proposed changes have neither the purpose nor will have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color or membership in a language group (required under the Voting Rights Act)," T. Christian Herren Jr., chief of the Justice Department's Voting Section, said in a Wednesday letter to Texas elections director Ann McGeehan.

Cue the whining.

The requested information will be virtually impossible to gather, said state Rep. Patricia Harless, R-Spring, House sponsor of the voter ID bill, SB 14.

"I am disappointed," she said. "I don't know that the Secretary of State can provide the information in the format that they want. I am not sure that we will be able to satisfy them. I think it's ridiculous."

World's tiniest violin playing beside the River of Tears and all that.

"I am pleased that DOJ is asking the probative questions, which indicates they suspect the real issue is voter suppression," (state Sen. Rodney) Ellis said.

That's MY Senator. More in brief from TPM. Charles' rejoinder is best:

It’s amusing that the DOJ slapped down the SOS again the same week that Republican State Rep. Patricia Harless, who had said that the DOJ’s initial request for more data was “reasonable” and that the SOS should be able to respond quickly, published a lame pro-voter ID op-ed that essentially boiled down to “it won’t suppress as many votes as the critics say” and “it polls well”. I mean, Free Ice Cream Day would probably poll well, too, but that doesn’t mean it would be good public policy. Notably, Harless snuck in a bit about how voter ID would protect us from “fraud”, but nowhere in her piece did she document any actual examples of fraud that voter ID would protect us from. We all know the reason for that, of course, but then Harless can’t exactly come out and admit that the actual purpose of voter ID is to make it harder for some people to vote, as that might sound scary. But a discriminatory law by any other name would still discriminate.

Good Friday, everybody.

Occupy Dallas got their turn last night

Here is a compilation of minute-by-minute updates from the Occupy Dallas encampment as scores of Dallas police officers moved in late Wednesday and early Thursday to evict the protest group. There was no violence and 18 protesters were arrested.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17

4:05a Dallas police arrested 18 Occupy Dallas protesters during the overnight sweep to close the organization's campground near City Hall. Dallas police planned a 10 a.m. news conference to discuss the operation. - Jason Whitely, WFAA

1:49a The police sweep of the Occupy Dallas campground appears to be complete. The peaceful operation took about 45 minutes. Many police officers are now leaving, but dozens will remain through the night.

Entire live-blog here, in reverse chronological order.

Same MO: middle of the night, media restricted, hyper-aggressive use of force.

I'm guessing that it's only a matter of time before Occupy Houston gets the police state treatment. HPD is just waiting on Annise Parker's authorization. And if this were happening in Libya, or Egypt, then people like John McCain would be imploring the United States government to intervene militarily.

Today is a day of action in New York, Houston, and around the nation. Even as Occupy comes in for criticism from previously sympathetic circles, the movement expands.

We are at a necessary evolution point in the Occupy movement. I say "necessary" for two reasons: one, because of the hard truth that cities around the nation simply cannot tolerate camping as a form of free speech, thus necessitating a response to "putting tents up" that is increasingly relying on tear gas, riot gear, and mass arrests.

Two, because they aren't listening. The government, Wall Street, the media: they simply aren't listening yet. Most press coverage revolves around which cities beat the holy hell out of which protestors on any given day or which senior citizen posed such a damn threat to the riot-gear-laden police that they needed to be pepper sprayed, but the underlying messages of income inequality, corporate corruption and a captured government are, unsurprisingly, still being stonewalled.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg (and other mayors around the country) doesn't want people camping in his park anymore. Fine, then: he will push the protests into taking another form. That's probably good for the movement, and probably going to be worse for him.

You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.

"When the mayor — and a mayor who's a billionaire, by the way — sends a police force to guard Wall Street and use force against peaceful protesters, that plays right into the hands of this movement's narrative," (Fordham University sociology professor Heather) Gautney said.

Only a small part

... of what's twirling around in there.

De-Occupy efforts by cities will only grow the movement

Dorli Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday.

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict "Occupy" protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night's move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

This is another reason why the Democratic Party won't see any benefit from attempting to co-opt the Occupy movement.

The FBI has so far failed to respond to requests for an official response, and of the 14 local police agencies contacted in the past 24 hours, all have declined to respond to questions on this issue.

But in a recent interview with the BBC," Oakland Mayor Jean Quan mentioned she was on a conference call just before the recent wave of crackdowns began.

"I was recently on a conference call of 18 cities who had the same situation, where what had started as a political movement and a political encampment ended up being an encampment that was no longer in control of the people who started them."

I'm certain that every mayor in the nation, from Michael Bloomberg to Annise Parker, is thinking that Jean Quan is a real dumbass. Among the concerns that coordination is designed to address is the 'criminal element'.

Don't set a midnight deadline to evict Occupy Wall Street protesters — it will only give a crowd of demonstrators time to form. Don't set ultimatums because it will encourage violent protesters to break it. Fence off the parks after an eviction so protesters can't reoccupy it.

As concerns over safety and sanitation grew at the encampments over the last month, officials from nearly 40 cities turned to each other on conference calls, sharing what worked and what hasn't as they grappled with the leaderless movement.

 A media blackout is also part of the coordinated strategy.

New Yorkers awoke to front-page stories and photographs in both the New York Post and the New York Daily News. Coverage by the two papers was supportive of the mayor and the police actions but disparaging toward the protesters. An AlterNet reporter, arriving on the scene at 1:30am, shortly after the raid began, could get nowhere near Zuccotti Park due to police barricades (and was subjected to pepper spray while attempting to report on events). How did the friendly reporters gain their access? Was there advance coordination to allow certain media outlets access and block the rest? Why was press access restricted? Were some reporters' credentials confiscated? How will reports of unwarranted force on the part of police toward the press be addressed?

More on the constitutional implications of Mayor Bloomberg's actions here. Calling tarps that shield food and medicine from the weather a 'tent', which is 'illegal', appears to be part of the coordinated strategy.

A dispute over what constitutes a tent led to the arrest of an Occupy Houston protester Tuesday at a downtown encampment at Tranquility Park, members of the group said.

They said several Houston police officers came to the park about 2:30 p.m., ordering them to remove tarps that were covering tables.

Occupy Houston members said the tarps were only brought out because of Tuesday afternoon's rain.

Protesters said police told them that placing tarps across tables — even as a temporary measure to protect supplies from the rain — made it a prohibited tent.

Some of the protesters questioned the timing of the decision to send Houston police into Tranquility Park on Tuesday.

"They waited until it was raining when they knew everything was going to get damaged," Diedrich Holgate said.

In New York, police took knives and slashed the heavy-duty Army tents that OWS had brought in to shield demonstrators from the bitter winter on its way.

So besides exasperation, why are coordinated attacks occurring on Occupy encampments now?

(T)he timing's very interesting -- and, for some people, very convenient. The nation's expecting a deficit package from the undemocratic super committee, anticipating another possible free trade deal, and waiting to see whether Wall Street will go unpunished for its foreclosure crime wave. All that makes this a very good time for dissident voices to suddenly disappear.

Go to that link to read more about the coming Catfood Super Committee's austerity bargain, the Free Trade with Asia deal going down right now, and the Obama DOJ's immunity-from-prosecution agreement with the Wall Street gangstas. Probably a good time not to have angry people in the streets already when those things come down.

Or so they think.

The one good thing about the violent responses from police departments trying to put down the Occupy movement is that they will fail. Just as those same government crackdowns failed throughout the Middle East.

Violence against peaceful protestors brings even more people into the movement. This is the hydra of revolution; cut off one head and two more sprout. The more they try to knock it down, the stronger it will grow.

Occupy has already grown past the point where repression will stop it. The only thing that will stop the movement now is for those in power to address the issues that the people demand.

License plates and dog whistles *updates and responses*

(This post originally appeared last August, and was OSD's rejoinder to Progress Texas' effort to prevent the Confederate license plate design from being offered among the options for vanity plates in the state. In light of the defeat of the proposal, I present Mark Corcoran of Progress Texas' response, received today via e-mail.)

We took (Open Source Dem's) criticism seriously because we believe that online actions, when done right and properly combined with earned media strategies and offline actions, can be extremely effective.

Over the last few months we collected 25,000+ petitions signatures and had 5,000+ people directly contact the TxDMV opposing the Confederate flag proposal, generating hundres of earned media stories. Last Thursday, the TxDMV unanimously voted down the Confederate license plate after previously being tied 4 - 4.

Johnny Walker, a board member who switched his vote from yes to no said - “I listened to the comments, the feelings and emotions of people before the board and what they think is best for the state.”

We understand that other organizations have given online organizing a bad name. We don't do actions to simply grow an email list. All of our actions have a purpose and goal - some are long term, some are short term.

Open Source Dem's original post from August 11 follows.

===========

Texas has privatized production and distribution of license plates. There is already a “Bonnie Blue Flag” vanity plate reminiscent, notably, of battle ensigns favored by Confederate regiments from Texas:

I do not know if neo-Confederate yahoos understand this and use the existing Texas plate as a signaling (or fund-raising) device. Most KKK and Aryan brotherhood types prefer the “Southern Cross” (figuring in the design discussed below) to the “Hardee Pattern” device (above).

More important may be the “T for Texas” series of plates. I think these may be a Tea Party, True the Vote, or Christianist signal. It may be used to raise funds not just for Rick Perry cronies but for a battery of far-right political organizations. The new license plate regime seems to be a multi-level marketing arrangement, probably not just outrageous but actually illegal.

Tacit communication -- dog whistles -- are a salient part of the "politics as war" practiced by the far right. This is very effective relative to the brain-dead Methodism of our state party, including Progress Texas' attempt to emulate the right-wing outrage machine in order to raise money. The Texas Democratic Party and its partners, allies, whatever in Austin are breaking any semblance of message discipline and cranking out "pink noise" with no coherence or effect at all. This is consuming precious resources on make-work for hangers-on in Austin and generating spam.

Fake petitions and non-binding referenda signal political weakness and indecision to potential Democratic voters, something else to waste their time and money. This is stupid on steroids.

(Ed. note: This is what OSD is referring to in the previous.)

Pink noise and a mish-mash of campaign finance and non-profit enterprise are really dangerous in the hands of people with little proficiency in anything but bipartisan cronyism.

BIRGing and CORFing (but not with our politicos)

A crowd of Penn State students in school sweatshirts huddled together near an old university building to listen to a call for unity, healing and peace. They wiped away tears, rested their heads on friends' shoulders and reflected on a week that stained the place many of them see as a second home.

"We are what makes the university thrive," said T.J. Bard, student body president, the day after his peers rioted in the streets to defend the firing of coach Joe Paterno. "And we are the ones who must restore glory to Penn State."

Why them? What happened on their campus wasn't their fault. Most didn't even know Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky and Matt McQueary. Usually in society, when something as horrific as child molestation happens, people around the alleged perpetrators cut all ties. They reject. So why not protest Sandusky preying upon children instead of rioting against the board for firing a football coach? Why not feel satisfaction in the punishment of an old guard that collectively made serious leadership errors, rather than oppose the rightful dissolution of a system that protected evil?

"If they were completely objective, they would say, 'These people did something terrible and I can't support them, I cannot be in their corner.'" says Dr. Don Forsyth, a psychology professor specializing in group dynamics at the University of Richmond. "But they aren't objective."

I've been amused by this oddity of "We won", "we're going to the championship game", "we are the champions" for a long, long time. The (fairly recent ) phenomenon of wearing jerseys to the game -- or to the bar to watch the game on teevee -- feeds into the ego-stroke.

You never hear "we lost", or "we choked", it's always "they".

What's happening to the students in Happy Valley is a common psychological phenomenon. The rest of the country watches the students and thinks they're missing the point. But in the students' minds, the story is happening to them. After all, "We are Penn State."

Social psychologists use two terms: BIRGing and CORFing -- Basking in Reflected Glory and Cutting off Reflected Failure. In the first, fans of a football team, for example, want to identify with the players' success. Decked out in team gear, they'll say, "We had a great win. We were awesome," when in reality the fans had no part in the win. Cutting off Reflected Failure happens when a team makes a mistake or loses, and fans blame it on an external factor to distance themselves from the defeat. "The refs were biased. The weather's bad." The true blame doesn't lie with the team.

"This is clearly a case of collective identity," says Dr. Forsyth of the Penn State reaction. "Students leave home, leave their family and they want to identify with their school. Their school has always been a place of tradition and honor, and that has been tarnished. So when they lose that identity, they panic."

And the cognitive dissonance gets worse.

Many students see JoePa as a victim, and their strong identity with him means they feel like victims, too. So they blame the media or the legal system. Is it a coincidence that the only real material damage from the riots was an overturned TV news truck? Respected ESPN reporter Tom Farrey said he was hit by a rock.

Most of us can't truly relate to the most important part of this story; the part that really has nothing to do with football. The part with the kids whose lives have never and will never be the same after such abuse from adults they were supposed to be able to trust. The part with the parents who couldn't save their children from sexual predators. But when you're 18 or 19 years old in State College, football is what you see everywhere around you and abuse (and the victims' faces) are hidden.

"Football runs the social life, it's all about football," Forsyth says. "It's the major source of everything that happens there.

"The actual crimes are very distant from them."

That atmosphere, thankfully, did change fairly quickly ... by gametime Saturday.

Student leaders came together to support victims of sexual abuse by wearing blue ribbons to Saturday's game and selling T-shirts to raise money for the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Prevent Child Abuse America Organization. PSU and Nebraska students joined in prayer before the game.

Not fast enough for some, though. The judge who ordered Jerry Sandusky released on unsecured bail turns out to be a volunteer in the Second Mile charity. And here's where the conversation pivots to politics.

I’m 31, an Iraq war veteran, a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, a native of State College, acquaintance of Jerry Sandusky’s, and a product of his Second Mile foundation.

And I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation.

That's a handful of institutions that have failed his generation right there.

Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.

For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.

We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us -- at the orders of our leader -- to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping. 
 
The times following September 11th called for leadership, not reckless, gluttonous tax cuts. But our leaders then, as now, seemed more concerned with flattery. Then -House Majority Leader and now-convicted felon Tom Delay told us, “nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.” Not exactly Churchillian stuff.

Those of us who did enlist were ordered into Iraq on the promise of being “greeted as liberators,” in the words of our then-vice president. Several thousand of us are dead from that false promise.

We looked for leadership from our churches, and were told to fight not poverty or injustice, but gay marriage. In the Catholic Church, we were told to blame the media, not the abusive priests, not the bishops, not the Vatican, for making us feel that our church has failed us in its sex abuse scandal and cover-up.

Our parents’ generation has balked at the tough decisions required to preserve our country’s sacred entitlements, leaving us to clean up the mess. They let the infrastructure built with their fathers’ hands crumble like a stale cookie. They downgraded our nation’s credit rating. They seem content to hand us a debt exceeding the size of our entire economy, rather than brave a fight against the fortunate and entrenched interests on K Street and Wall Street.

Now we are asking for jobs and are being told we aren’t good enough, to the tune of 3.3 million unemployed workers between the ages of 25 and 34.
 
This failure of a generation is as true in the halls of Congress as it is at Penn State.

With the 60 Minutes report last night that Your Congress has been trading stocks on insider information (which is illegal everywhere else in the country) you can only arrive at one conclusion: it's time to clean house.

And with the police crackdowns on Occupy encampments in Portland and Oakland last night and this morning, is there anybody still wondering what that is all about?

That would have been last week, of course. Next chance comes next year.