Counterpunch drops an antisemitic dime

Disgusted by Counterpunch running actual antisemitism, not anti-Zionism.

David Yearsley, who is a regular contributor at Counterpunch, as in for more than 15 years, ran a piece about the intersection of O.J. Simpson and culture, "Sounding Out O.J." At the end is an embedded video of a Jay-Z rap.

At 2:36, it says:

You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America?

That's antisemitic, period and end of story. Not anti-Zionist, antisemitic.

Dude is a tenured music prof at Cornell and a published author. I have no doubt he knows the full video, especially given the way he teed it up.

No mention of football or murder is made in what I consider the towering musical monument to Simpson erected in 2017: Jay-Z’s “Story of O.J.” I cannot find its refrain—“I’m not Black, I’m O.J.”—anywhere before this song engraved his epitaph in sound seven years before his death.

I listened through to that point to hear the refrain he mentions. And, did a WTF. Yearsley nowhere says something like: "It's good except for this," or, "I'm posting this ONLY for the OJ angle; I disagree with Jay Z's antisemitism," or anything similar.

We're getting nearer to deblogrolling Counterpunch.

And, this is of importance ever since Oct. 7. To have ethical standing in calling out Zionists for conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism, I have to call out actual antisemitism.

And, as part of that, I Tweeted both Counterpunch and St. Clair. (We follow each other.) No response. I emailed Yearsley. No response.

Green Party notes: Texas Greens convention

First, per the TXGP report on presidential voting, it's sad that there is no Travis precinct nor a Dallas one. See below for more.

Second, gag me with a fucking spoon. Hunter Crow is officially in permacandidate territory with his run for State Board of Education District 11, after his 2022 pseudo-Green run for the RRC and 2020 for Tarrant County Community College District board.

Third, I've said elsewhere, but Eddie Espinoza for the RRC is a good candidate. No idea about Robin Lee Vargas. No website. Apparently no Facebook. She does have a "donorbox" to get money. Even less idea about OC Caldwell 1 for SBOE District 10, for whom I don't even get Google hits. Per the Secretary of State website, that's it. Yep, no Greens for statewide office other than Stein and Espinoza. Not even with the Paxton-led sacking of all three GOP incumbents on the Court of Criminal Appeals. Not even with Democrats running an open ConservaDem for Senate in Colin Allred. "Congrats," pre-emptively and in advance, in missing the 2 percent cutoff in November. Best of luck in 2026. (Compare Libertarians, who, while not as strong as a decade ago, are still far stronger than Greens.) 

I know, I know, there's the filing fees. But for Senate? There's nobody with Green interest, or even a non-Conserva version of a Dem willing to be a scalawag? No GP leaning lawyer willing to pony up for a CCA run? 

Two years ago, there were three statewide candidates with no presidential race. This year, just one "organic" statewide candidate plus the presidential race. The two SBOE candidates are also good, as the party needs more candidates in general, but overall? This is backsliding.

Fourth and related? The state party bragging about chapters starting in Travis and Dallas counties. On the latter, there was one there 15-plus years ago when I lived there. For various reasons, it imploded. I think a restart effort was made a few years ago, but that then imploded. (COVID may have been a factor.) Travis? Why Keep Austin Weird hasn't had a Green Party chapter even as Dems have drifted neoliberal for years is beyond me. Denton Greens seemed OK in size for Denton County when I saw Howie there in 2020.

Fifth? Jill Stein got the state Green Party prez nod easily. Jasmine Sherman, about whom I've written briefly before, was second. Jorge Zavala, the other party-certified (not going there, not going there, on "certified") candidate, discussed with Sherman, was third. Must be kind of embarrassing to alleged Green Party co-founder Randy Toler (that's highly disputed, his claim, also at that link) to finish fourth. Side note: David Bruce Collins was a Sherman delegate there, I presume, since he's a Sherman delegate at the national convention.

Had never before heard of this fucking Daví, complete with accent mark, who, born DeShaun Davis, claims to be the "Ävatar of Earth" (with umlaut) and is already in as much of fucking nutbar territory as Zavala. But wait, per his website bio linked there, it gets better:

During the global shutdown and pandemic of 2020, Daví experienced a spiritual transformation where he began developing the ability to communicate with animals.

Oy. Just oy. And per that claim? Join Kinky Friedman in a race for Dogcatcher of Utopia with a skill like that.

Texas Progressives talk elections items

The Texas Progressives hope that you're a real environmentalist with belated Earth Day thoughts while saying good-bye to the good, the bad and the ugly of the late Daniel Dennett.

Bibi and his ZioNazis looking to start WWIII? The government of Israel recently bent regulations to allow red heifers (Yes, THOSE red heifers) in to the country, and they're coming from right here in Tex-ass.

SocraticGadfly, having seen that H-E-B has arrived on the north side of the Metroplex, decided to indulge nostalgia, if nothing else, but found it (and the H-E-B cult) crushed by reality when compared with shopping options he already has.

Too late for things like the Sutherland Springs mass shooting, of course, but I welcome the Army largely getting rid of the possibility of discharge instead of court martial for soldiers accused of violent crimes. And, given the Sutherland Springs shooter was actually in the Air Force, ALL military branches should have such a policy.

Rephrasing the Trib? Not a single Democrat in Texas voted against continuing the proxy war in Ukraine. That said, a couple of Dems in Texas were part of the 37 overall to vote against more money for Israel without strings attached; sadly, the ConservaDem running for Senate, Colin Allred, was not part of them. Dem votes in Texas and nationally were slightly better on the TikTok ban, but Allred again voted ConservaDem. The Congressional Progressive Caucus remains the Pergressuve Cucks on Russia-Ukraine. Sidebar reminder: Texas Greens have NO candidate for the U.S. Senate. More on that later.

DEI administrators getting the boot from state universities? Wingnuts in government aren't going to help out by clarifying guidelines; they're happy with fear ruling the roost.

Tarrant County DA José Garza is under wingnut attack under the Lege's so-called "rogue prosecutor" law.

Off the Kuff published two more HCAD Board candidate interviews, with Melissa Noriega for position 2 and Kathy Blueford-Daniels for position 1.

The San Antonio Report introduces the Bexar County candidates for their appraisal district board. 

The Fort Worth Report attended a candidates forum for Tarrant Appraisal District Board hopefuls.

Torchy's vs Velvet battle going nationwide, in a Monthly long read. Fortunately, the piece notes the angle of both companies' founders, like that of most Mexican fast-ish food chains, being Anglos. 

WTF is Alex Jones doing in Terlingua?

Mother Jones flunky David Corn still pushing Russiagate.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project posted about his letter sent to each member of Houston City Council asking about the Republican Chair & Republican majority on Council's so-called Public Safety Committee. 

Your Local Epidemiologist goes over the research on the "hygiene hypothesis" for kids' health. (And, it looks like YLE is becoming a "brand.")

 Texas 2036 has bad news about how our students are doing in math. 

The Observer warns that the recent Panhandle wildfire is a harbinger.

New thoughts on Chaco Canyon

 

This piece in an anthropology journal, though focused on agriculture at Pueblo Alto, is very interesting in other ways.

The biggie? I'd long ago read Steve Lekson's "The Chaco Meridian," the biggest proponent of a quasi-imperial "Chaco culture," complete with looking at a vast network of roads running as far north as the San Juan, south to somewhere near today's Thoreau, New Mexico, etc.

What if thse weren't roads? What if they were stone watercourses to aid in tricking water to the Chaco complex? Now, Wetherbee Dorshow admits that in some cases, we could have places built as roads where the water-funneling came along for the ride. But, they also say that people like Lekson might be like Percival Lowell and his canals on Mars on how many roads they claim to have found. Dorshow doesn't use that analogy themselves, but it came to my mind.

Per research in the Bluff area by Winston Hurst, some roads in the Chaco area most likely are roads — roads that connected local sites in a 20-30 mile radius. But that still doesn't mean they were built for an "imperial Chaco" development.

Or, we may find the flip side to be true. Additional research may indicate that the "Chaco phenomenon" was exported to places like Cedar Ridge as well as Mesa Verde.

Anyway, I think the "Chaco Meridian" idea springs from an old tussle in Anasazi archaeoastronomy between maximizers and minimizers.

It's also likely that, although they had some influences on each other, Mogollon and Ancestral Puebloan cultures evolved largely independently, and that it was partially if not primarily coincidence that both peaked at about the same time. And, related to that? The Hurst link makes clear that, just in the Four Corners, in the "culmination" period of the 1200s before dispersal of Ancestral Puebloans to Hopi, Rio Grande Valley, etc., that different strategies for defense, etc., were being followed at different sites.

None of this is to say that pre-Columbian American Indians didn't have empires or similar. Look at the Triple Alliance ("Aztec"). On a smaller land scale before them, the Mayans. The Inca in South America. But, archaeologists have to be careful not to read things into the record.

==

The second is not limited to Chaco, though that is its focus, but rather to Anasazi culture in general. And, it's that cannibalism-pusher Christy Turner, to be blunt, cheats on some of his own research classifications of some individual sites as surely cannibalistic when they're missing one site criterion from a list of which he says sites much have all criteria to count. Kerriann Marden notes that such is Turner's domination of the discussion that, in the past, even a Kurt Dongoske has felt he had to respond to all of Turner's talking points, rather than questioning his methodology or conclusions.

Beyond that, the piece's focus is that we still probably don't know enough about Chacoan burial practices to say what is typical and what is atypical. Look at the United States, after all. Just 170 years ago, pre-Civil War, embalming was not a deal. Then it was. And today, and even going back about 20 years ago, now, cremation is the most common inhumation practice.

RIP Joe Tillotson

No, nobody famous, and not a takedown obit.

Joe wasn't perfect, but when I was at the Today Newspapers group years and years ago, I considered the then mayor of Lancaster a personal friend. He did a lot of good for the city in many ways. I didn't know all the places he lived, let alone that his great-great-grandfather fought at San Jacinto. An interesting story.

It does leave me nostalgic about my time in Lancaster. The city park, with new library and main fire station, was arguably the best use of the land on North Dallas, even if the fire station part of it, especially, didn't quite fit the bill of original plans for the site.

The Dallas Inland Port and related things? Yes, it was in many ways the best use of much of Lancaster's land — at least, best use in terms of the current operations of the American economy.

I don't know how long he remained in the corner of the (in)famous Larry D. Lewis as Lancaster ISD superintendent after I left. However long he did, it was too long. That would be the one real blot on his escutcheon, to use the old phrase.

==

Flip side? Even if a bit naive at times, like over the Ten Mile Creek flood, he had the city's best interest in other ways. That includes the school district under Lewis' predecessor, the widely perceived as racist Bill Ward, per this old Dallas Observer piece. (I recall the incident, the school board meeting, and the difficulty in getting anything close to a straight answer out of Ward.) Sadly, when doing teh Google earlier today, I came across a "Memories of Lancaster, Texas" Facebook group, where someone had posted his obit. One White commenter went racist by saying he turned Lancaster into a ghetto. While not saying said commenter is AS racist as white folks whose actions are noted in the Observer piece, she IS racist by what I see from that comment alone. And ignorant. (Said person, per her profile, now lives in Kaufman County. Sounds about right.)

Wilmer: A blast from the past! Albeit miswritten

Very interesting longform piece at the Dallas Observer about the town's history of abuse of involuntary annexations and related issues.

I remember when UP started developing its Dallas Railport. I remember when Our Man Downtown, John Wiley Price, being paid Perot campaign money to protect its railport on the Santa Fe next to Alliance Airport in Fort Worth, did everything he could to gut it, and if not, to try to force local communities to hire Friends of JWP as subcontractors for local development tied to that. (I heard more about that in Hutchins than Wilmer.) I remember JWP trying to gut Richard Allen's Dallas Inland Port, too, also at Perot bidding.

Part of the blast from the past? Mention of the "Wilmer Citizen."

I was unaware of this Joe Aldrich starting this website "Wilmer Citizen." I WAS pretty sure that there was an old blog by that name, and there it still is, and pretty sure that it had, in its early days, some sort of backdoor semi-connection with the convicted felon Joey Dauben, who is nowhere mentioned by the Observer. Most commenters on early posts from the site, back in 2008, are either Joey or groupies of his, from what I can tell, starting with how many have deleted or hidden blogger profiles. Also, and related? The old racist (or it at least used to be, as detailed in my Dauben link) Ellis County Press, an early landing site of Dauben's before firing him, is in links in the right hand rail. In any case, it's NOT a website, contra the Observer's author. It's a blog that's updated 1-2x a month.

So, even if Joey Dauben is not directly connected? I'd take half of what's on there with big grains of salt.

There's further reason I worry about the Observer puffing up some blogger who doesn't have a journalism background and doesn't write regularly. Even with Dauben, who did have a quasi-background in journalism, and who wrote profusely, you  still have someone who makes insinuations that get to the edge of libel (and often, probably went over that edge, but he had no money to be sued over). And, you had the Observer giving him a fawning profile in 2011. That's why I look askance at Christian McPhate even doing this level of puffery of Aldrich.

As for the issue at hand? Rather, per its backstory?

Anybody who lived in either Wilmer or Hutchins 15 years ago knew that its growth potential was in logistics. Ditto for Lancaster, between UP and Richard Allen. As long as the tax money is being put to good use (including wide, strong-based streets to and from these logistics warehouses), isn't that a good bottom line? And, if some elected officials sold their land to commercial developers, as long as the real estate version of insider trading didn't happen, isn't this America? And, if you ran for mayor and lost? (Aldrich did in 20-12, and you won't find that in the story. He also was (is? can't tell from Wilmer's website and I don't know if Bizpedia's listing is current) on the board for the Wilmer Community Development Corporation. That means, depending on when he served, he might have been in a position of authority when this forcible annexation was being abused. I think that would be relevant.

As for the details of tax abatements for UP and the returns on that? $1.5 million in net revenue, if rounded up, is $2 million, which is "millions," plural. The 30K jobs? UP didn't promise all the employees would live in Wilmer and there's no way it could do that. I don't know if it's delivered on that; the promise appears to be vague enough it's hard to measure. And, people working in Wilmer could be living in Hutchins, Lancaster, Dallas, Ferris, Combine, Seagoville or unincorporated Dallas County. After all, there's still lots of that, per map below.

Beyond that? There's other reasons people might work in Wilmer but not live there.

One is the now-absorbed Wilmer-Hutchins ISD. I don't know how much better the schools there have gotten since Dallas ISD took it over. I don't know how much newer any schools facilities have gotten. But, per what I mentioned above? If I had kids, there are other places I'd live first.

Second, Wilmer, like Hutchins to its north, is prone to flooding on its east side in the Trinity bottoms. (So is much of unincorporated Dallas County.) Speaking of, even if it's not delivered on all its vague promises, do you want the inland port of Union Pacific, along with the logistics sites, or do you want Hutchins State Jail, as your driver of growth?

 

And, maybe if JWP hadn't knifed it in the back along with the Inland Port, it would have delivered more. And, weirdly, McPhate links to Schutze stories about said knifing. I can't tell if he totally supports their angle, more supports than objects, more objects than supports, or what.

If I had to put a bottom line on the story? I'd say Wilmer civic leaders of the past 15 years before 2022 were about 40 percent civic-minded, 40 percent personally grifting and 20 percent semi-clueless about legal restrictions. And, I'd say Aldrich is about 50 percent concerned citizen, 35 percent butt-hurt failed grifter and 15 percent quasi-Daubenite winger.

Sidebar: Did not know former Hutchins Mayor Artis Johnson (from whom I heard the same stuff about JWP's shakedown attempts as did Jim Schutze) was stupidly indicted. Fortunately, Craig Watkins dismissed charges shortly before leaving office.