Reporting from the Tex-ass GOP confab

For the Monthly, CD Hooks wrote about heading to the state GOP confab, complete with its ousting of current chair Abraham George and his replacement with another far-right wingnut-squared. He adds observations that Scott Presler, aka The Pustulence as I call him on Shitter (and did not know he was gay) was in town campaigning for Kenny Boy. 

The Trib stuck its nose in as well, noting unity is still not there, to the point that state House Speaker Dustin Burrows, the first to attend a GOP convention, got booed. 

It adds this note about Dannie Goeb and Big John still fighting:

In his Friday speech, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn was a “sore loser” after being defeated in his primary runoff by Attorney General Ken Paxton. He chastised Cornyn for making “bad comments” after the May 26 race and not backing Paxton. 

“Patrick is worried about losing in November,” Cornyn said Saturday. “He should be.

Hah! That said, wake me up when Big John shakes himself free of Donald John in DC.

But, per that piece, the Islamophobia bullshit remains the biggest crowd-pleaser. 

The Trib also notes that beyond the usual nuttery about Sharia law, Strangeabbott also repeated the usual nuttery about 2/3 votes for local property tax increases. 

Strangeabbott's bullshit executive order on data centers

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how Kuff was surely wrong on issues with data centers were a big campaign issue for Democrats, or could be.

Well, now we have Strangeabbott's order on firm electric supply (though the issue of needing water was left semi-AWOL) insuring this isn't a Democratic talking point. And, yes, Strangeabbott did talk about them needing a closed-loop water supply, but the water in that closed loop can still be stolen from existing water, exacerbated by the fact that Tex-ass still thinks groundwater and riverine water are largely separate things.

That is only one part of how this is more bullshit as politics than anything else. 

It should also be noted that Strangeabbott's executive order says not a thing about cryptomining. The Observer notes a cryptomine in water-starved Corpus Christi used 11 million gallons last year, and this year, its water usage is being hidden. Oh? State law allows Corpus to hide individual users' water consumption. 

So, first of all, wake me up when Strangeabbott has a similar executive order on crypotomines.

Secondly, wake me up when both EOs say more about water usage, and water pollution.

Thirdly, wake me up when they mention noise pollution. 

 

I'll eat my hat if Texas Dems flip 12 state House seats

They claim they can, per the Trib.

I know why they think that.

One reason is, like 2018, Trump is on the downslope, and it's in a midterm.

So, context? The 2017 House was 95-55. That was cut to 83-67 in 2019. That's probably not a fair comp, as the 95-55 split was incredibly high. So, with Trump actually running for that second term in 2020? 

The House split was unchanged. It then widened 3 in 2023 and 2 more in 2025. 

Also, Trump was not yet that unpopular with Never Trumper Rethuglicans in 2018, too. I can't remember what was behind the big shift and the Trib offers no insight.

As for the other reasons they think they have a shot? 

Kenny Boy Paxton will not be such a lead anchor for the GOP as they think, and Teenybopper Talarico will not be such a boost. It's possible that many Texas Hispanics who flopped to Trump two years ago look at Talarico and stay home. They don't vote Paxton, but they don't vote Talarico either.

The third reason? We'll see if redistricting overreach plays out in the state House as well as US Congress. Might be room around the edges but no more.

Otherwise? If a fragile would-be cease-fire gets extended beyond the 60 days of June 19, if ratified then, gas prices keep going down and Trump keeps looking better that way.

Strangeabbott has partially removed data centers as an electoral issue, though not totally. 

Platner wins; DC dishes as Klipp misses

As political junkies all know, political novice and oysterman around town Graham Platner won Maine's Democratic Senate primary Tuesday night.

I offered my thoughts on his Totenkopf tattoo and other matters of his campaign about a month ago. That was before the sexting after marriage came out, and before the newest allegations of some form of abuse came out as well. Early voting in Maine also started about that time, meaning, especially since Democrats generally are more likely to vote early than Rethugs, that Platner didn't have to fully face the music on these issues in the primary.

That leads me to Klippenstein.

Ken used his space on Substack Tuesday to dunk on national Democraps and media punditry types for trying to boost Gov. Janet Mills and her walking dead campaign, while calling out the media punditry for publishing allegations against him as fact.

Ken says:

The New York Times was so desperate to align itself with the Party in Washington that it published allegations that it said it “could not independently corroborate” — something I’ve literally never seen them do before.

Versus something it claimed was corroborated, but wasn’t, like the story claiming Palestinian rapes?

Versus something I don’t think the NYT even tried to corroborate, but just took a “trust us” stance, like Judith Miller on Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction”?

Maybe not in exactly the way it did with Platner, but yeah, the NYT. has done this before, or similar.

As for his chances in the general, Ken is pretty right that Maine is hard to poll in primary races, in part because of ranked choice voting. But, unless there's a "name" third candidate, whether independent, Green or Libertarian, in the general, the RCV issue itself isn't in that much play. And, on the ticket-splitting and him looking at Collins overcoming polling takes to beat Sara Gideon in 2020? That one cuts both ways. Wiki's piece on the Maine 2026 Senate race notes Collins has outperformed other Republicans on the Maine ballot in all previous races.

The miss? Ken has uses this race to bash DC, rather than to talk about Democratic alternatives to both Platner and Mills.

Like Amanda LaFlamme. I only learned about her on Tuesday when I did teh Google to find out what other candidates were in the race. I don't know why she was only a write-in. The Bangor Daily News reported in February that she actually filed in 2025, plenty of time to get the 2,000 signatures necessary. But the first piece says "failed to get." So, did more progressive Dems in Maine deem Platner a lock? Well, he only filed in August 2025, two months after her.

She sounds like she could have been good on multiple issues, but, for whatever reason, got no traction. I'm sure there's something I'm missing, but I don't know what it is, and teh Goggle hasn't really helped me.

Since Platner was and is a flawed candidate, and yet he's the best Maine Dems could present, I'd like to hear more about why LaFlamme failed to gain that traction and less, for now at least, of dunking on Chuck Schumer and national media. 

The Maine Green Independent Party had its state convention May 30, and per Wiki's page on the election, per Ballotpedia, and per the party's book of face and website, sadly appears not to have a candidate. Ballotpedia lists three minor candidates, but they all appear to be Democrats who dropped out of the Doink primary. A sad election in many ways it shall be. 

Texas Progressives

Off the Kuff highlights the Texas Railroad Commissioner race as the latest example of Republicans getting even worse.

SocraticGadfly notes that Trump's education voucher tax credit could explode on top of Texas vouchers in January; looking to this November, he thinks data centers are not a big political needle-mover.

Some Texas Lege wingnuts and the "public policy" orgs want to further expand the 2023 "Death Star" bill. Given that this was the model for the abortion law by providing "enforcement" by private lawsuit, some of the push is to let the AG sue.

Related? More than 130 primarily smaller-sized Texas towns have their tax rates frozen over lack of annual audits, and now must play catch-up, with the lessened funding hindering catch-up. 

Israhell even shoots Palestinian babies. 

Trump AG Todd Blanche faces a June 14 ticking time bomb. (I doubt he'd actually be disbarred in New York, but you never know.) 

Daniel Vaughn calls on barbecue gourmands and smokers alike to remember that Texas barbecue was not based on brisket and doesn't need to be limited to it today.

Chris Hooks says, in hindsight, that impeachment was the best thing to happen to Kenny Boy. 

Dan Crenshaw lets it rip with the Monthly. 

Space City Weather spells out what you need to know for the 2026 hurricane season.

The Texas Signal presents an updated brief history of Pride in Texas.

Law Dork analyzes the appellate court ruling that protects current enlisted transgender service members from discharge.

Texas Public Opinion Research asks some broader questions about current issues.

Franklin Strong explains what's going on with the SBOE's bizarre required reading list, and what you can do to help.

Scott Pelley keeps speaking out while Lesley Stahl, other vets, staying for now

Here's Pelley talking to the NYT. Let's start with the Nick Bilton hiring and his take.

Nick Bilton wrote an email to the staff, introducing himself. And it was so insulting. He told us that it wasn’t 1968 anymore, and he helpfully noted that gasoline doesn’t cost 32 cents anymore, suggested that we had all been frozen in amber in 1968 when the program first went on the air, and that nothing had improved. He said in his email that it was “strange” that “60 Minutes” is only on the air at 7 o’clock Eastern time on Sunday once a week, when we’ve been on the air 24-7 globally, online, for well over a decade. It betrayed the fact that Nick Bilton didn’t know anything about us, didn’t know anything about our culture, and yet was being imposed on us as our new leader.

Well, there you go. 

Next, like a Trump-fired federal government employee, on the video, he talks about peers who are still "trapped." 

As for the speaking out, and why him? This:

First of all, our entire senior staff had been wiped out. They’re not there. I looked around the room. I’m the only correspondent there, which surprised me very much. I learned that my colleagues were out shooting stories, as they should be in the month of June, but I’m the only correspondent. And I looked at my friends and colleagues in the room and realized I was the senior person.

Summarized it. 

He notes also the insensitivity of many staffers there being fired right after the Emmys and right before Bilton was hired. He notes the lack of experience of Bilton. 

He notes it was like losing "family." As he starts tearing up:

It was the wholesale nature of it. Senior staff wiped out after a triumphal year. One of the things Nick Bilton said in that ill-fated email to the staff was that he was excited — I’m paraphrasing here — to tell the staff about the new crop of correspondents. And when I saw that, I thought, “They’re going to fire all of us, eventually.” So that’s why I use these admittedly, for a journalist, hyperbolic terms. They capture the scale of what happened.

Again, nails it. 

More, from the video: 

When someone wipes out — murders — a large number of your family members, people are hurt and shocked and in disbelief and just desperate for some explaination.

Ouch.

I think that's what pissed him off above all. The lack of explanation. Pelley went on to refute Bari Weiss on this. 

There still has been none.

None as in no explanation. 

== 

The second half of the header? This, from Deadline.

The three remaining fill-time correspondents on 60 Minutes — Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim — said Friday that they will remain with the show. 

“We feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement of the existing power structure,” they wrote in a joint memo on Friday. “That is simply categorically not the case. Here’s why we are staying: We don’t want to see 60 Minutes die.”

OK.

Isn't "60 Minutes" as you previously knew it already dead?  And, if you're actually believing what Nick Bilton is promising, I have beachfront property in North Dakota for sale.

==

As for calls by Pelley for CBS or its Paramount parent to fire Weiss? Not happening and Scott knows.

That said, beyond the ideological agenda she's foisting on the network's news? She has nowhere to go.

She's not going to peel off significant numbers of MAGAts from Fox, and the post-MAGAts to the right — Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, etc —are already lost over the strident Zionism. I don't know about the never-full-MAGA types like Dan Crenshaw, where he's at on Israel and Gaza, but surely not totally in Weiss' ballpark at a minimum. 

==

Pelley's background? He, per Wiki, got yanked from running CBS Evening News because he complained to (and about) brass then as well. This time, it was over the network's slow response to "Me Too" and related.