All's fair in love and war but gads the Russkies are stupid

Supposedly, according to the Beeb, the son of a senior Russian official, himself a diplomatic official, recruited a Ukrainian national to set fire to British Prime Minister Der Starmer's [sic] house.

OK, here's teh stupidz. It is the same teh stupidz of Guccifer 2.0, the Russian hacker who got into Democratic National Committee computer servers — AND into Republican National Committee ones as well, the best refudiation of the godawful Seth Rich Conspiracy theory nutters. For more on the truth of all of the above, see my very long piece.

Anyway, here's teh stupidz, per the Beeb's reporting on the trial of the originally recruited person and two confederates:

There was no mention in the trial of what the posters put up by Lavrynovych on EL's orders actually advertised: a purported far-right group called Direct Action UK. 

The group sought to appear as an organic British creation. But we found that Direct Action was created online by Russian operatives to cause division among ordinary people in the UK. 

Messages sent in the group bore a Moscow timestamp, used Cyrillic letters, and placed pound signs at the end of numbers, rather than at the start - as in Russian.

Can you NOT hide this better? (EL is the initials of the diplomatic official.) 

As for the amateurishness? Julian Assange used the similar amateurishness to claim that proved Guccifer 2.0 was indeed Russian. No, it proved they were amateurs, though not as much as this time — unless the bad timestamps and other things were deliberate, as part of sending a message. 

Texas Progressives talk Strangeabbott, Talarico, more

Off the Kuff notes Greg Abbott's minor flip flop on data center mania. (My take, updating a previous piece calling out Kuff for thinking this would become a Democratic electioneering point, is here.)

SocraticGadfly offers his thoughts on a trio of All Things Talarico. First is a brief look at former Ken Paxton impeachment lawyer Dan Cogdell's Talarico endorsement. Second, he notes that the Observer is interestingly somewhat non-sanguine about Talarico's chances. Third and also over an Observer piece, he does a detailed, skeptical, even somewhat crushing dive into Sam Brockman's framing of Talarico's religious background.

A Boston federal judge told Kenny Boy to stick it on his suit against ActBlue. 

Mimi Swartz infiltrated Turning Point USA's Women's Leadership Summit, led by Erika Kirk (there's three KKK letters in that name!) her own self. (I disagree with Swartz about one thing. Kirk ain't that good looking, and leans way too heavy into the makeup.) 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project visited friends & family in Cincinnati. While there, he connected with pro-democracy advocates doing the work just as so many in the Houston-region are doing.

Steve Vladeck pens an obituary for the Purcell Principle.

The San Antonio Report documents how the Kerrville Folk Festival became a hub for recovery.

D Magazine talks to the daughter of I. M. Pei, the architect of Dallas' City Hall, about the proposal to tear it down.

Evil MoPac talks to Austin journalist Hannah Rucker about her work with foster children.

Robert Wilonsky is back in the journalism saddle. Good deal.  

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.