Abbott wastes Texas money for nonexistent ‘vote fraud’

Showing that he is a “GOP Oreo” (bipartisan on the outside, attack dog on the inside” Greg Abbott dug up a whole 26 “cases” of alleged vote fraud. I put “cases” in scare quotes because part of what Abbott labels as “cases” is old folks getting someone else to mail in a mail-in ballot for them, and that person then not identifying himself or herself on the envelope. (Texas law makes it a crime to carry someone else’s filled-out ballot to the mailbox, unless the carrier puts his or her own name and address on the envelope.)

In other words, 18 of the 26 cases Abbott prosecuted were technicalities.

Jerry Strickland, an Abbott spokesman, rejected that, saying the attorney general's office responds to complaints it receives. Under state law, the attorney general can initiate voter-fraud cases or respond to district attorneys seeking outside help in local political cases.

Bullshit. Who complained?

With just 18 of these non-cases, Mr. Strickland, it looks pretty obvious that Abbott deliberately went searching for penny-ante crap like this.

In another case, three Hidalgo County women were indicted on charges they illegally assisted elderly voters and mishandled the mail-in ballots in the 2005 McAllen mayor’s race. A judge dismissed the charges in March.

“They were not our investigations, and I didn't feel they would stand up before a jury,” said Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra.

Read the story for more examples of Greg Abbott looking for the mote in somebody else’s eye while walking around with a 2x4 in his own.

Meanwhile, in the real world, has Greg Abbott prosecuted, or even investigated, allegations of real vote fraud?

Hell, no:

Democrats accuse Mr. Abbott of a partisan operation to discourage voters, especially minorities.

They contrast the prosecutions with complaints that more than 100 ballots were mishandled in a 2005 Highland Park election, a case in which Mr. Abbott took no action.

First, Mr. “Open Government” needs to be open with us just how much money he wasted on this snipe hunt.

Second, he needs to stop being chickenshit about dodging interviews. Did he get marching orders from Rove?

Strickland said Abbott declined to be interviewed because of ongoing litigation and investigations.

Citing pending litigation, the office also declined to release letters, e-mails and other documents – other than a list of the cases prosecuted – sought by The News under the state's Public Information Act. So it’s unclear how many complaints the attorney general has received or investigated overall.

Is it something about being the state’s AG, if you’re a Republican, that has an especially corrupting influence?

Oh, if you visit the Snooze story, there is a sidebar about Abbott pushing again (natch) for voter ID laws.

Dallas-area school districts charging kids to ride the bus

At least for extracurricular activities, some Dallas school districts are asking kids to pony up for the trip there.

At Richardson ISD, it’s going to be $5 a person for an in-town trip to UTD. Out-of-town trips are out.

Richardson ISD estimates that it will pay $259,000 to fuel its fleet of buses this school year, much higher than the $139,000 paid in 2004-05.

Dallas County Schools, which provides regular bus service to Dallas ISD and Cedar Hill in the Best Southwest, among suburban school districts, is trying to adapt. It’s got some propane buses in its Lancaster yard, but there are drawbacks to it.

Fort Worth ISD is buying more high-aerodynamics buses.

I have a suggestion – start buying hybrid buses.

(Oh, look for school lunch prices to go up, too.)

Ehrman – the ‘problem of evil’ and a personal journey

“The problem with evil” is where the collision between ideas of an omnipotent god and an omnibenevolent one hit the road.

It’s THE emotional/psychological reason many people question their faith, whether Christian, or perhaps Jewish or Muslim, and why some of the more courageous of them, willing to live with their new answers, leave their old faiths behind, especially if they have also raised and wrestled with intellectual questions such as the validity and accuracy of their bibles or other spiritual books.

Bart D. Ehrman has made such a journey, on both the emotional and intellectual sides. The Duke University New Testament professor deals with the “problem of evil,” often known by the theological name of “theodicy,” in this good new book.

On Amazon, it got 1-starred by a lot of conservative Christians who simply couldn’t stand to see their worldviews challenged.

My response? Is your faith actually that weak, then?

Two-star reviewers there are either that, or people who can’t stand to have Ehrman provide a litany of suffering.

Well, that’s exactly why he needed to do that. Hardened hearts take more effort to break down.

After starting with the Holocaust and other examples of litany, Ehrman takes a look at what the Bible says about suffering.

Of course, and contrary to 1-star reviewers, the Bible was not written as one book, with one theology.

There are several theologies on suffering, including two different, uneasily co-existing ones, within the book of Job, cited by most Christians as the exemplar of such a theology.

First, there’s the theology of the Torah and the prophets: You sinned, and that’ why bad things are happening.

Then, there’s Job. Neither the prose nor the poetic sections ever say Job is a sinner. That’s not even on the lips of Yahweh (poetry) or Eloah (prose) sections of the book, again, contrary to what many people think.

In the prose section, we get a capricious God playing a giant poker game with The Satan, in his role as God’s devil’s advocate. Ehrman rightly notes the ending of the book, in the prose section, is offensive. God waves his magic wand, and restores all Job had lost, including doubling his family size with additional children popping up out of nowhere.

On the poetry side of Job, he notes Yahweh never gives Job an answer, which Paul also notes in Romans. Job never gets his this-world advocate (and NO, he is not asking for a Messiah to die for his sins with “my redeemer liveth, burn your KJVs) to argue his case before Yahweh that he is indeed blameless.

From there, Ehrman moves on to address the Stoic/Existentialist view of suffering in Ecclesiastes. He says as an agnostic that this is something he can accept; we’ll probably never get a “why” answer.

From there, he wraps up with Daniel, the book that originated the apocalyptic explanation for suffering that permeates the New Testament.

For me, this is a solid four-star book. Drawbacks? It’s a bit thin; I’d love to have heard more of Ehrman’s personal story. And, although he’s a New Testament scholar, to the degree he’s comfortable, I’d love to hear him tackle theodicy in other world religions.

For more on books I like, see my Amazon top-1,500 review link at right.

Bush tin ear has India in arms – but Texans should look in mirror on food costs

Blaming India for the rise in global food prices because Indians want a middle-class diet. Indians have responded that if we would stop overeating, U.S. liposuction bills and the food available would relieve all of sub-Saharan Africa’s hunger.

The chart at right will show you in clear detail who is to blame.

If’ you’re eating the U.S. average of 3,700 calories a day, you’re overeating and therefore, you’re to blame, as well as being a candidate for either liposuction, stomach stapling or a heart bypass. If you’re buying 3,700 calories, but not eating them all, you’re to blame for environmental destructiveness.

No, you don’t have to eat like an Indian. Look at the European dietary averages on the chart. If you just cut your meat consumption down to that level (and I have) from eight ounces of meat a day to four ounces, you’d lower the pressure on meat prices, corn prices, soybean prices, and the prairie environment.

As for the Texas farmers this would affect, enough Indians and Chinese will want a semblance of the American diet soon enough, and be able to afford it soon enough, that farmers won’t go broke.

Does the government want blacks to smoke more?

It sure looks that way. Menthol, found most prominently in “urban-friendly” brands such as Kool and Newport, is getting kid-glove treatment?

A Congressional bill to give the Food and Drug Administration power to regulate cigarettes bans most flavored cigarettes, including clove and cinnamon ones.

Menthol?

Not a peep. (Nearly 75 percent of black smokers use menthol brands, compared with only about one in four white smokers.)

As the Times notes:

The reason menthol is seen as politically off limits, despite those concerns, is that mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. They make up more than one-fourth of the $70 billion American cigarette market and are becoming increasingly important to the industry leader, Philip Morris USA, without whose lobbying support the legislation might have no chance of passage.

Whenever Congress is in bed with Philip Morris, you know bad things are bound to happen.

Here’s the fallout that will happen. Many blacks will rightly think whites care less about them. Some will even raise the old conspiracy theory flag.

Supporters of the bill, even African-Americans, argue there’s no other way to pass it:

“I would have been in favor of banning menthol,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, who supports the bill. “But as a practical matter that simply wasn’t doable.”

Even the head of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, a nonprofit group that has been adamantly against menthol, acknowledges that the ingredient needed to be off the bargaining table — for now — because he does not want to imperil the bill’s chances.

“The bottom line is we want the legislation,” said William S. Robinson, the group’s executive director. “But we want to reserve the right to address this issue at some critical point because of the percentage of people of African descent who use mentholated products.”

Fine. Pull the bill. Don’t postpone “someday” into an undefined future.

And, there’s other fallout. First, Philip Morris is lying about menthol. Congress, do you really want to go down the road of partnering with a brazen liar on this issue?

And, there’s other issues. Beyond the fact that menthol does make it easier to smoke, there’s concerns about menthol in cigs as a health issue:

Concerns about menthol have circulated since at least 1998, when the C.D.C. reported that menthol “may increase the absorption of harmful smoking constituents.”

Also, the taste of menthol may increase psychological dependence.

Brazil wants to join OPEC

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told Spiegel (English-language international version) that the discovery of possibly major offshore oil deposits qualifies it for membership.

Oil and OPEC

We discovered immense oil reserves 273 kilometers (170 miles) off the coast, at a depth of 2,140 meters (7,021 feet) and under a 5,000-meter (16,404-foot) layer of salt and rock. We have the know-how to exploit these reserves. We expect to start test-drilling in March and start producing oil in 2010. Then Brazil will become a major oil exporter. We want to join OPEC and try to make oil cheaper.

Lulu talked on several other issues, too:
Biofuels:

I have always told my European friends that it isn’t worth restructuring their well-organized agricultural systems to produce biofuel. We, and the Africans, can do a much better job of it. The European Union should give the Third World a chance to produce biofuel.

Deforestation

The Amazon region isn’t very well suited for cattle pastureland. And the soil isn't good for sugarcane or soybeans either. … We have tightened our controls. Deforestation has declined by almost 60 percent in Brazil. But more than 22 million people live in the Amazon region. They too want to eat, drive cars and use refrigerators.

The Latin American left and Columbian rebels

The left in South America still uses the same slogans as the European left did in the 1920s and 1930s. Politicians take a more radical position in places where there is hunger, and where people have no access to education. This continent was churned up by military coups. Guerrilla groups were still active in many countries only 20 years ago. Today we all agree — with the exception of FARC in Colombia — that elections are the only legitimate way to acquire power.

Read the whole thing; it’s a great interview.

Getting fired while having surgery and the effect on your local bank

Ahh, don’t you love the warmth of Wall Street?

On the other hand, who knows what types of financial products Ms. Kennedy may have been hawking, managing, selling, etc.?

Her getting canned may be a bit of schadenfreudic justice. And here’s one reason to feel less sorry for her:

Banks and brokerage firms generally pay out about 50 percent of their revenue to employees as salaries and bonuses. Last year that percentage leapt to 70 percent, even as business began to dry up.

And, it’s not just schlubs who are being axed:

“People will try to delay them for as long as possible,” Meredith Whitney, the banking analyst at Oppenheimer & Company, said of the layoffs, which she thinks are far from over. “It cuts to the bone.”

Meanwhile, you may have longer waiting times at your friendly local bank:

Whitney estimates that on average banks announced plans to reduce their work forces by 5 to 8 percent. They probably will have to cut at least twice that amount, she said.

Wunderbar. More online/telephone banking will probably get outsourced to India, too.

Send Bush the bill for this one too

The planetary loss of biodiversity costs the world $3 trillion per year, according to the European Union and German’s department of the environment.

Why Bush’s bill? To the degree global warming contributes to loss of biodiversity, and to the degree his “be patriotic by spending” mantra contributes to the loss of biodiversity, the bill is his.

It’s just further evidence not only that he’s anti-environmental, but that he is economically clueless.

Quotable quotes updated – sex, love, masturbation

“Sex without love between two people is just mutual masturbation” — John Holmes
“John Holmes did a lot of mutual masturbation” — SocraticGadfly

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” — George Santayana
“Neoconservatives remain caught in the loops of their self-inflicted Twilight Zone” — SocraticGadfly

Got a famous quote you’d like to see updated? Drop me a line at socraticgadflyAThotmailDOTcom.

Steve Novick – A politician you could really have a shot and a beer with

Oregon Democratic Senatorial candidate Steve Novick has a recent commercial out with him opening a beer bottle with the metal prosthesis that serves as his left hand. His primary battle with Oregon State House Speaker Jeff Merkley also shows the dangers inherent in someone 3,000 miles away, in this case, New York Sen. Charles Schumer, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, trying to be a kingmaker. But, it’s not the first case of complaints against Schumer.

In general, as exemplified in Kentucky, the complaints are that Schumer picks candidates with deep pockets ahead of any political philosophy or leanings that go left of the palest centrism.

Of course, critics could read a little history, like that of 1924 Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis, and realize this is nothing new.

Anyway, Novick’s commercial is here.

And, per his website, Novick appears to have plenty of progressive cred.

Put Washington on the lawsuit witness stand for global warming

Invoking the idea of “public trust” (gee, what a novel concept), that’s exactly what environmental law professor is trying to do, namely, laying the legal groundwork for suing the federal government over failure to adequately take action against global warming.

I characterize the atmosphere as an asset that the people own in common. The government is a trustee of that asset. This approach has a basis in our environmental law. You can even think of it as an attribute of sovereignty ... that is, the duty of government to protect our natural resources. The atmosphere is one of those natural resources. In fact, it’s the most crucial resource in our trust, because it holds everything else together.

She calls it a much more “macro” level approach rather than using existing regulatory frameworks like the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act (as in the case of the recent polar bear listing), etc. Not only would her approach have a broader focus on the number of issues, all hinged on global warming, it would address, because of that, one single suit would target a much greater number of government agencies than something like a Clean Air Act suit.

For more about Wood, a professor at the University of Oregon, visit her website.

More on Texas’ raspberry ants/Caribbean crazy ants problem

I hadn’t heard of these babies before, and even scientists aren’t sure where they came from, but probably the Caribbean, but they're becoming a Houston headache. Anyway, Helltown, you can keep these babies; we do NOT want them in Big D.

The one plus side they have is that they attack fire ants.

Flip sides?
• They bite humans, though not so painfully;
• They swarm electric lines and outlets, as shown, just like fire ants;
• They eat hatchlings of the endangered Attwater’s prairie chicken;
• They eat ladybugs;
• Like fire ants, they’re resistant to over-the-counter chemicals.

My dread? Not just them moving further north, but, at some point, a cross developing between either them and fire ants, or them and the large red ants of the desert Southwest.

The New York Times has more on this annoying critter that I hope to doorknob does not move up from Houston.

Texas A&M has biological details about this ant, including video:

Another species of Paratrechina, fulva, has caused great pestilence in rural and urban areas of Colombia. In many cases, they displaced all other ant species. Small livestock (e.g. chickens) may die of asphyxia. Larger animals, such as cattle, are attacked around eyes, nasal fossae and hooves. They have also dried grasslands due to their association with homopterans.

A&M notes these ants nest under almost any object that retains moisture.

And, despite my hopes for their geographical containment, A&M notes they have moved beyond the city of Houston itself and are likely to advance even further. Global warming should make north Texas more and more amenable to them, if they did come from the Caribbean. A&M says moisture will be the main limiter, perhaps more than semi-cool winters.

A public poll argument for raising the gas tax

According to the Washington Post, gas would have to rise to a whopping $5.65 a gallon to seriously impact driving habits. A majority of people who have not already altered their driving habits (the story doesn’t say how much, or if they were even asked that) said, on average, that was their cutoff line.

Phase in a $1/gal increase in the federal gas tax, at 20 cents a year over five years, strong enough to be a stick but not so heavy as to be a club, and you’ve got another leg of federal energy policy. In addition to more money for highway funds, you could also do pass-throughs with the money to get more states to do buyback aid programs for the most serious older gas-guzzlers now on the roads, in the hands of people too poor to upgrade.

That’s part of a larger survey on inflation worries.

Irony alert – Brian Loncar can be his own ‘strong arm of the law’

The Dallas-area personal injury attorney, whom some might call an ambulance chaser, was broadsided by a Dallas Fire-Rescue engine in Oak Cliff.

Even though Loncar was already in the intersection, he’d likely be ruled at fault, should a citation be issued, for failure to yield to an emergency vehicle. He’s in critical condition.

Flooding next and ongoing worry of China

When you have a dam with cracks big enough to swallow your fist, I’d say yes.

What if this were the Three Gorges Dam? China built the monster even though the country was warned by outside geological experts the soils at the site weren’t the best to anchor a dam. It also built a dam at a site it knew had some history of earthquakes.