TX Progressives talk sports, more

Type your summary here Type rest of the post here The Texas Progessive Alliance notes that Festivus poles can be repurposed for May Day celebrations as it brings you this week's roundup.


Neil at All People Have Value made a small donation to help with recent flooding in Houston. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

The passing of the legendary Texas sports reporter and editor Blackie Sherrod was noted by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows that Republicans run the Child Protection Services, but still.  Blaming the victim in domestic abuse cases?  Still?

Libby Shaw contributing to Daily Kos insists that Texas Republican leadership and its obsession with public bathrooms while it ignores crucially important health and environmental challenges is a literal threat to our lives. Houston: Hurricanes, Frequent Flooding and now Zika too?

Socratic Gadfly moves outside of politics to ask if recent injuries may give Timmeh, Manu (and Pops?) a Los Spurs retirement gift..

Off the Kuff looks at new polling evidence showing a shift in partisan preference towards the Democrats in Harris County.


And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

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Adam Briggle, father of a transgender son, calls out Denton County Sheriff candidate Tracy Murphree for a transphobic post on Facebook. Murphree then agreed to meet with the Briggle family to talk with them and get a better understanding of the issue, but as Equality Texas reports, he abruptly backed out before their meeting could take place.

Offcite gives a tour of Houston's new clinic for the homeless.

Andrea Grimes would like to know who will protect us from the likes of Dennis Hastert and Johnny Manziel.

Paradise in Hell advises Ted Cruz to listen to himself.

Space City Weather puts Houston's recent flooding into historical perspective.

The TSTA Blog cites actual statistics experts on the subject of using statistical methods for teacher evaluation

.Robert Rivard considers Julian Castro's place on Hillary Clinton's VP short list.

GOP, Kristol, still not getting the Trump message

Bill Kristol, a fine picker of presidential, and vice-presidential (Palin) horseflesh if there ever was one, thinks that 2012 loser Mittens Romney can be run as an independent candidate.

Wrong.

Texas' filing deadline is Monday, per Ballotpedia. And, no Repug is winning as an indy without winning Texas.

Four other states have deadlines before the end of June and another half-dozen by mid-July.

It's obviously not Kristol klear that the deadline for an indy campaign has come and gone, and that's not without asking how reluctant Mittens is anyway.

Such is the level of desperation, though, that the party that is home of the non-reality-based-community has doubled down on fleeing reality.

What the rainbow melting pot means in America's future

This is a partial follow-up on a previous piece from Jamelle Bouie about Bernie Sanders' "insurgency," but in part a more general piece. My original blogging about this Bouie piece is here.

First, per the Census Bureau, in this PDF about future population trends, "Hispanic whites" (by subtracting "non-Hispanic whites" from "whites") are at 15 percent of population, compared to African-Americans at 13.2 percent. By 2060, that's expected to be 25 percent Hispanic vs. 14.3 percent black.

Even if that's too high, and I think it is, in 2060 with an estimated non-Hispanic white population at still over 50 percent, we could have a Hispanic population of 21 percent or so, or half again the size of the African-American population.

But, this still all ignores the Asian-American population. It was at 5.4 percent in 2014, but is projected at 9.3 percent by 2060, which I don't think is an underestimate.

In other words, by 2060, Asians will have moved from being a little over 40 percent of black population today to being about two-thirds of black population.

And, we haven't even talked about a projected doubling, or more, in people identifying as two or more races.

In this, Bouie, and others, are overlooking this broadening of diversity.

Future insurgencies of the left will be successful, or not, in part because of this.

Bouie notes:

Black voters aren’t just palette-swapped white ones; they have interests and concerns that are specific to themselves and their communities.

This will be true of other ethnoi as well. 

Hispanics, while not as solidly Democratic as African-Americans, tend to split 2-1 that way. That's long been pretty much a "given," for them to go somewhere between 60 and 70 percent Democratic.

The big deal is a shift in Asian American voting. Just 25 percent Democratic in 1992, since 2004, by presidential races, it has closely tracked Hispanic voting.

There's another twist in all of this, as I've blogged before.

African-Americans are arguably the most religious ethnos in America, and many trend fairly conservative in their religiosity. This is especially true on LGBT issues, which, in terms of things like the spread of HIV, has caused self-inflicted wounds, or literal injury. Hispanics? Many are no longer actual or cultural Catholics, as I've blogged repeatedly as words of warning to Democratic Party officials in Texas and nationally.

However, a fair amount of Asian-Americans are Buddhist or Hindu. (Others converted to Christianity after moving, and yet others, particularly Koreans, were of Christian background when coming here.) As such, they bring a different perspective to First Amendment issues, and to what issues are of most religious relevance.

And, Asian votes, like black or hispanic ones, are concentrated in certain states.

Ignoring some smaller states, they're already at 15 percent in California. I'm sure that's no surprise. And 10 percent in New York, maybe not either. But, 9 percent in New Jersey; 8 percent in Massachusetts and Washington State; 7 percent in Virginia; 6 percent in Illinois.

That then said, on some things, Asian-American votes will surely be even less monolithic than African-American or Hispanic ones.

I suspect that some African-Americans don't want to face these issues. Seeing Bernie Sanders' Hawaii win being dissed as not relevant to mainland multiculturalism is, in fact, part of why I started writing this.

That's not to say that we should just shrug our shoulders over the still-unique plight that blacks have vis-a-vis Hispanics or Asians. (Not versus American Indians, though.) We should recognize that this makes dealing with various issues of racial prejudice even more complicated — and more exploitable by those who would do that.

I have an extensive follow-up here on how this relates to the issue of privilege.

Hillary Clinton cabinet unveiled

Through the power of a mix of Wikileaks and a still-craptacularly-unsecured Democratic National Committee data server, I've been able to uncover just who Hillary Clinton will have in her Cabinet.

Chief of staff: Huma Abedin

Secretary of State: Henry Kissinger's cloned stem cells

Secretary of Treasury: Lloyd Blankfein (actually, sad real rumor has Larry Fink of Black Rock, a man on record as wanting to privatize Social Security)

Chairman of Council of Economic Advisors: Paul Krugman, a man who started in government in Reagan's CEA, in case you didn't know

Secretary of Defense: Peter Daou

National Security Adviser: Bibi Netanyahu

Secretary of Education: Deray McKesson

"Drug czar": Mark Kleiman, who only wants drugs legal if he can neoliberally protect the poor from themselves

New Cabinet position, with multiple heads

Secretary of Neoliberal Identity Politics: Cory Booker

Clinton Youth (think 1933): Julian Castro; or was that Raul Castro?

A few other non-Cabinet rank, but important positions?

Communications director/press secretary: David Brock

Leader of faith-based programs: Bill Clinton (think about the laying on of hands)

This will be updated in the future.

Deep East Texas notes, part 2

It’s time for another blog post about truth vs. fiction on religion here in Deep East Texas.

I’ve blogged elsewhere about how there is no statistical difference on divorce rates and adultery rates between conservative Christians and the general populace. There’s less clear evidence, but I suspect there’s also little difference in the two populations, in “setting up house,” per the rest of the old phrase, “without benefit of marriage.”

And, here, that relates to an online-only media outlet in this area. The boyfriend and girlfriend are “housekeepers.” And, she, at least, is definitely a conservative Christian.

Indeed, they recently did a website upgrade — mainly I think on making it load faster, as it doesn’t look much different, or much better, than before. That’s the set-up.

Anyway, she had a post on there, talking about the upgrades, about how she had “prayed over it.” Really? I’m sure the upgrades didn’t cost that much money. But, that’s that type of mentality. 

I know that the Sixth (or Seventh) Commandment, depending on your variety of Christian or Jewish poison, talks about adultery. It’s clear that is extramarital, not premarital, sex. However, various aspects of both the Jewish Tanakh/Christian Old Testament and the Christian New Testament condemn all sex outside of marriage, whether premarital or extramarital.

Indeed, Jesus said, “He who looks at a woman who is not his wife with lust in his eye …”

So, sorry, folks. Like on other matters sexual, you, like other conservative Xns, are hypocrites. Shock me.

Oh, and don’t try the “it’s like marriage.” First, ancient Israel and the secular society of ancient Christianity recognized formal, legal marriage. Second, yes, Texas has common-law marriage, but both partners have to hold themselves out as husband and wife. (Of course there’s no gay or lesbian common-law sex in Texas.) And, I don't know if they're actually living together or not, but according to that itinerant Jew, even that doesn't matter.

Then, in a recent trial here, the state DA used the old “do you go to church” rhetorical question of a witness to allegedly establish his honesty. Well, we know churchgoers — and church leaders — lie, and even lie with impunity. Witness the papal sexual abuse scandal.

Besides shock me, infuriate me. The old acronym, IOKIYAR, is used by many political conservatives to excuse GOP behavior, or by non-Republicans to mock that. Maybe we need to change the R to a C.