Texas Progessives talk food and more

Off the Kuff points to CD23 as both an underrated pickup opportunity and a possible barometer of Democrats' statewide fortunes

  SocraticGadfly talks about the Cesar Chavez bombshell and why it didn't totally surprise him.

Neil at Houston Democracy Project reported how far-right Republican Councilmember Twila Carter sent the boss of Houston's police union to stand next to him, because he was taking pictures of public figures in a public place. It was just so stupid. And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

 The Texas Observer looks at the influencer factor in the Democratic primary

 Your Local Epidemiologist celebrates the legal victory for vaccines.

The Dallas Observer reported on a local public telehealth initiative that went wrong.

Texas Public Opinion Research announced its new project to test policy proposals.

The Barbed Wire tracks a number of Texas LGBTQ+ businesses that have disappeared.

Science news roundup — psychopathy and more

Is psychopathy — as used as a psychological personality disorder — a "zombie idea," one that won't die despite plenty of research, either "positive" contradicting the idea, or "negative," not returning supporting empirical evidence," showing that it doesn't hold water? Aeon magazine says yes. 

Global warming may actually be speeding up

No sugarcoating this reporting from Popular Mechanics:

What [Stefan] Rahmstorf, along with fellow co-author and U.S. statistician Grant Foster, discovered was that the world warmed an average rate of 0.35 degrees Celsius in the past decade, a significant increase from the 0.2 degrees Celsius increases typically recorded since 1970. This is obviously worrying, since not only is the planet warming, but the rate at which it’s warming may be accelerating, complicating the timeline for addressing the climate crisis.

Ouch.

The authors explain how they got to this point: 

The new finding was made by stripping away natural influences, such as El Niño events, volcanic eruptions, and solar activity, to analyze the underlying rate of warming.

That said, this would further backstop James Hansen's late-2023 findings, viciously attacked by Michael Mann. It would further backstop Peter Brannen's new book.

Per both of them, we have a "good" chance of hitting 5°C within a century. 

Is this too high? 

PM notes that other scientists have found accelerated warming, but at "just" 0.27 degrees.

Do the math. That's 2.7°C in a century, plus the 1.5 currently, for a total of 4.2. (The 3.5 would get us to 5C.) 

Canada's New Democratic Party imploding further into irrelevance

Canadian Commons Member Lori Idlout last week became the fourth party member since November to jump from the NDP to Mark Carney's Liberals.

This is the direct result of one thing, and that is taking a year — yes, a year! — to elect a new party leader since the disastrous early 2025 election result that forced the resignation of Jagmeet Singh as party leader.

That, in turn, was its own stupidity, prefigured by Singh having the NDP enter into a "service and supply lite" agreement with the Liberals under Justin Trudeau and getting basically nothing in return. More about that from me here. 

The first link notes that Canada has by-elections for three ridings on April 13. If Carney wins two, with the four defections, the Liberals have a majority not a plurality. And, that is expected to be likely.

Technically, it will be 10 months, not a full year, as the NDP is currently in the middle of a three-week election process.  But, you couldn't schedule this for earlier, when Singh resigned as party leader in May 2025 after the April election? You couldn't decide to move it up when you started having a defector problem?

I'm not sure which is worse, the NDP taking nearly a year for this, or Britain's Your Party defectors from Labour doing the same even as British Greens eat their lunch. 

I mean, a theoretical selling point of parliamentary government is its flexibility. Delays like this totally undercut that. 

Iran war tidbits update

Did Israel push Trump to attack precisely to nuke progress in talks about Iran's nuclear program? Judging by comments by Britain's national security advisor, it sure looks like that. 

Aluminum joins oil as among essential elements affected by the Iran war as Bahrain shuts down the world's largest smelter. 

Mondoweiss wonders about blowback in the Iran War, specifically citing the high price for Israel to run its Iron Dome and indirectly referring to "Arab street" issues in the Gulf states.

Toddler Trump can't stand any news that shows him wrong, as he tries to climb off his ladder, or as I said last week in a Substack note about Drop Site News, pull his ass out of a crack, so calling the media traitors is where we're at now. 

When not throwing toddler temper tantrums, the lying that's congenital with him (which is what that Substack note was about) keeps warping into high speed, such as claiming he's talked to one or more former presidents about Iran and they're with him. 

Meanwhile, here's an expanded version of my "handwaving and fearmongering" roundup from a few days ago. 

I am not totally surprised about the Cesar Chavez bombshell

If you haven't heard, it's statements he committed some sort of child sexual abuse, and also adult sexual assault, including raping Dolores Huerta:

“The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to,” Huerta said in a statement published online. “The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.”

Wow. 

That NBC piece and others ultimately refer to an in-depth New York Times story. 

Two other women say they were molested as girls, one of them raped, more than once. It's bad, if you've not read.

Why am I not surprised? Though not even hinting at something like this, a critical bio of Chavez written about 15 years ago, "The Crusades of Cesar Chavez," referenced his authoritarian leadership and other problems.

On Huerta, as for why not earlier? She addressed that; and of course, corporate farm owners would have exploited this, and police certainly would have.

As for why now? She's clearing the slate of life at age 95. 

As for why not later than the 1970s but earlier than now? The UFW and la familia:

A handful of Mr. Chavez’s relatives and former U.F.W. leaders have been aware for years about various allegations of sexual misconduct, but there is no evidence that they made efforts to fully investigate the accusations, acknowledge the victims or apologize to them. Instead, many of the women say they were discouraged from speaking out in order to preserve Mr. Chavez’s public image.

There you go.

Chavez has long been dead, but his legacy has to be preserved. The book is rated at under 4 stars on Goodreads, probably in part for that reason. 

That said, the NYT notes that Pawel's "Crusades" and one other bio referenced other sex issues of Chavez:

Elements of Mr. Chavez’s extramarital affairs with adult women were chronicled in at least two biographies, Matt Garcia’s “From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement,” published in 2012, and Miriam Pawel’s “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography,” published in 2014.

And, the Times went beyond that: 

While Mr. Chavez had eight children with his wife, Helen Chavez, the Times investigation showed that he also fathered at least four children with three other women. Two of these children and other family members were interviewed and confirmed the relationship. Additionally, 23andMe match results were reviewed for the four children, and they confirmed Mr. Chavez’s biological ties in each case.

That's why it was low-rated. 

And, while Huerta's allegations have not been verified, Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas have both talked to multiple people over a period of years. 

And, reportedly, one of Huerta's kids with Chavez came from that rape of her. 

Basically, Chavez' La Paz site came off to me in Pawel's book as a quasi-Jonestown. (Chavez, when wearing the aviator shades, even looks a bit like a Hispanic Jim Jones.) The book even notes, as does Garcia's, that he borrowed tools from Synanon.

As for the fears of reaction? Yeah, with Strangeabbott officially saying the state will not observe March 31 this year as Cesar Chavez Day and he would ask next year's Lege to permanently kill it, that's why.