Texas Progressives talk Paxton and Talarico and call out both halves of the duopoly

As with last week, I've split the weekly roundup into two parts.

Off the Kuff is following the polls in the Senate and other races. 

Related? Outgoing Ag Commish Sid Miller says Republicans will lose statewide races because of Strangeabbott's support for data centers and backlash to that. He thinks Abbott is trying to game the banana republic Texas Lege system to pass out favors within data centers, to boot.

Christofascist Tim Dunn is back in the arena to at least indirectly and in a small way support Ken Paxton financially per what Texas Monthly reports. Farris Wilks remains AWOL.

Kenny Boy failed again in his attempt to force gunz into the State Fair of Texas.

James Talarico, like Paxton, has a voting registration issue. (It makes me wonder if the top tier of non-duopoly candidates nationally has a similar problem anywhere. Dr. Jill Stein, have you always lived where you've claimed?) It makes me not wonder if Kuff will wrote about it, at least with a non-spinning take, because, unless snowballs freeze in hell, I know the answer is no. And, as of the afternoon of Aug. 9, the answer was indeed no. Shock me. The Trib story went up Aug. 5, plenty of time for him to write. 

Framing and spinning voting issues in Tarrant County

Lon Burnam was arrested over voting rights  issues at a special Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting, part of a larger protest. Per the first link, Burnam is talking about suing Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare, who may also have violated the Americans with Disabilities Act with a previous speaker.

But, per the second link, and per both Republicans and Democrats on the court, the county elections official, a nonpartisan appointee, Clint Ludwig, suggested the cut in voting sites, which the court eventually decided to table.

We'll see what Kuff says about that one. As of Aug. 9, nothing, not even about the Burnam arrest, let alone that the protests were misguided; the Trib stories went up Aug. 6.

Lone Star Left reported on the situation in Tarrant County and tries to spin it as a D win with O'Hare "caving" when the full court, presumably 5-0, tabled action on the proposed cuts. It doesn't even mention county elections head Clint Ludwig. So, it did Kuff's dirty work for him; he submitted the link as part of his set for this week's Texas Progressives roundup, and I separated the whole schmeer, with my links above, out of the mix. I also restacked Lone Star Left's piece with a shorter version of the first sentence of this paragraph. And, Michelle Davis, with a "you're free to believe what you want" opener, responded. In her response, she ignored what I said then, and two paragraphs above. 

From the second Trib link:

[T]he commissioners — both Republicans and Democrats — said at the meeting that they didn’t suggest the plan.

There you are, Michelle. 

Actual Constitutionality vs McKinney's Islamophobic nutters

Texas Monthly goes in-depth about McKinney's Islamophobic nutters who lie about Islam and also either are ignorant of or else lie about the First Amendment. They hated the McKinney city council following standard zoning — and being cognizant of past Supreme Court rulings about religious structures and zoning reguluations, surely — to approve the expansion of an already existing mosque and religious center. It also notes the "don't sharia Tex-ass" stems directly from Strangeabbott.

Speaking of, here's somebody who does understand:

After four hours of public comment, city employees gave a brief but thorough presentation on the actual site plan—the purported reason for the agenda item. Then the council was asked if any of them would like to speak. Justin Beller of District 1 asked to say a few words. As far as concerns about traffic and parking went, the Islamic Association had shown a willingness to work with its neighbors. “I’ve struggled to find words to address the other opinions that are injected into this discussion. This is a site-plan approval, nothing else. But it’s disheartening to be asked to break my oath of office or to defy the constitution because of some algorithmic rage or misinformation. Watching partisan politicians, with power to gain, use fear and outrage is disappointing. I would encourage all citizens to resist this reckless political rhetoric, which in my opinion amounts to election-year fearmongering.” He was, of course, drowned out by loud booing.

There you go. Per the First Amendment and those Supreme Court rulings, every elected official in the United States is required to swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. 

On Shitter, in addition to responding to them last week, I also started reporting their posts under the "hate" checkoff. 

ICE and body cameras

ICE plans for all of its ICE cubes, ICE bergs, or whatever, to have body cameras in the not-too-distant future, but says it will only release video when in its "best interest." Ain't how it works, ICE. It's called the Freedom of Information Act.

Max Blumenthal, red-brown antivaxxer

World Socialist Web Site, per a link posted by a likely duopoly tribalist journalist at Reddit named Shinbreaker who elsewhere claims that ALL questions about WIV were conspiracy theorizing, notes that he's an antivaxxer who back in 2022 was promoting red-brown alliances, and in nutter ways.

WSWS nutgrafs:

Seeking to cultivate a “red-brown” alliance between workers and fascists, Blumenthal declared, “This is not a left versus right issue. This is about economic rights... human rights and our constitutional rights.” 

He went on to call for an alliance of the “99 percent” against the “biomedical security state.” Instead of calling for increased protections for workers and their families, Blumenthal demanded that schools be reopened and that workers who refused to get vaccinated be allowed to return to work and infect their co-workers.

It then notes this wasn't new from Max, that he'd had a nutter piece by alleged Marxist nutter Christian Parenti promoting more of the same published at Grayzone two weeks before this rally.  (Outside of some of his tankie non-skeptical leftist modern political ideas, Parenti also thinks Zachary Taylor was poisoned.)

Top blogging of July 2026

As normal, not all posts are from the last month; whether new or "evergreen," they're the most read in the past month.

With that, and the normal reverse countdown, I dig in.

No. 10 is more than a decade old. It's about how convicted libertarian fraudster and alleged (pseudo-?) skeptic Brian Dunning hadn't changed when he got out of jail.  

No. 9 was the last Texas Progressives roundup for July; yours truly posted his piece about data centers. 

No. 8? Tim Tredwell was really fricking nuts 20 years ago and still is today. 

No. 7? The mods at Reddit's Ask Historians subreddit turned out to be pretendian pseudoleftists, not actual leftists, as is usually the case for identitarian librulz. (My refusal to accept all of their identitarian librul claims about genocide of American Indians is what led the shitheads to block me. One of the mods then committed academically unethical research about people blocked from the sub; worse, Cornell's research committee on her project did nothing.) I used the term "pretendian" in the header deliberately.

No. 6? Chris Stedman's "Faithiest" had more intellectual holes in it than Swiss cheese, which he tried to cover by melting into a tasty PR and marketing fondue, 13 years ago. It still does. 

No. 5 is straight politics, from a few years ago. It’s a roundup of some of the most odious lies by shyster-type lawyer Ty Clevenger about Seth Rich and the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.

No. 4 plays off No. 9; it’s my writing about Dunning’s conviction.

No. 3 is also an oldie but even more a goodie. It’s my investigative journalism about who Alan Smithee, more commonly styled as Actual Flatticus, but really named Chris Chopin, was in reality. Politically, he was a straight duopoly librul, if that, and had he not died young, IMO, would have gotten himself caught in the Seth Rich conspiracy theory morass full on.

No. 2 is from 2018: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, idiot.

No. 1 (drummmmmmrrrrrrrooooooolllllll)

My presidential rankings, of relevance in part because it’s dated coming from 2017. With nine years of hindsight and us now in Trump 2.0, I’d revise to put him in the bottom malebolge with Andy Johnson, Buck Buchanan and Frank Pierce. I’d also revise to push Lincoln from A+ to A, even with grading on a curve, and maybe even A-. I’d still keep him No. 1, which would pull Washington down to A-, too.