SocraticGadfly: 8/12/18 - 8/19/18

August 17, 2018

"Lupe get your gun," or "Lupe's got no gun"!

On the news that former Dallas County Sheriff Loopy Lupe Valdez (sorry, Brains, she's earning it more and more) "misplaced" her Dallas County Sheriff's Office service sidearm, a Beretta 9mm, sometime after transitioning out of office as of Dec. 31 last year, the head-shaking just gets worse.

This explains more of how her sheriff's office could "lose an inmate," I guess. It doesn't excuse it, of course, it just explains it.

Just another apparent example of bumbling that has kind of described her career as sheriff and now as guv candidate.

 Anyway, in light of this, we need some campaign theme music for her.

We can either say "Lupe get your gun" per a classic musical of 1950:



Or per Aerosmith, say, "Lupe's Lost a Gun":



Hey, Gilberto Hinojosa and other Texas Democratic Party poobahs? I know it's too late for him to establish Texas residence. But, if celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti doesn't run for prez in 2020, (and why, per Brains, doesn't CNN list him?) maybe you could recruit him four years from now?

Meanwhile, readers, feel free to vote in BOTH polls at right if you want. Will Loopy Lupe do better, the same or worse than either Wendy Davis in 2014 or Bill White in 2010?

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Update: The gun has been found, and it wasn't Valdez' fault. Rather, it was the Sheriff's Office. Of course, this is the SO she ran for 13 years.

==

Whoever's fault it ultimately was for being lost, Valdez admitted she didn't follow protocol for turning it in. Disorganization. A property room custodian has been reprimanded, or perhaps more accurately, made into the fall guy.

August 16, 2018

I almost wish Tiger Woods had won the PGA

Maybe it would have stopped ESPN from turd-polishing him.

Probably not. Even though Red Satan doesn't televise any of the majors, it still loves itself some stories clickbait.

Anyway?

Tiger is still not the GOAT. Jack Nicklaus is.

The top 10 that Jack faced throughout most of his career — and while lesser players can win majors, the cream usually rises to the top — was better than Tiger.

Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els from Tiger's peak might crack the 11-20 spots of Jack's peak, but not the top 10.

Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson and Seve Ballesteros were no doubts ahead of them. Peter Thompson and Ray Floyd arguably so. (Thompson didn't play the PGA tour, but five Opens, the last against an American-stacked field, is tough to overlook.) And, counting Jack himself, that gives me a top eight ahead of anything Tiger faced. Hale Irwin is arguably better. Julius Boros and Billy Casper are no worse than even and possibly better. Johnny Miller is even. That gives me 12. Throw out Seve, if you want, since his first major wasn't until 1979.

And, while they were largely post-Jack and pre-Tiger, Nick Faldo and Greg Norman are also better to probably better, than what Tiger faced.

Most those players wouldn't have been intimidated by Tiger the same way. Jack might have hit weights a bit and buffed the short game he admitted he neglected. Player would certainly have taken fitness tips from Tiger, and no way he's intimidated. Ditto on Ray Floyd. Certainly not on Lee and his own minority trying to crash big golf experiences.

I hate to sound like Dan Jenkins, so let's make sure I don't.

Dan's fetishizing of Ben Hogan to the point of trying to count things like the North/South as a major is ridiculous.

Plus, Hogan, setting aside his car accident and miracle comeback, played in a relatively barren era for golf. Sam Snead had a long career, playing at a winning level throughout the 1950s, but Byron Nelson had retired, and until Arnie and Gary at the end of the decade, when Cary Middlecoff and a young Boros are your next in line, it's not good depth. Given that the PGA banned Bobby Locke, using a face-saving excuse to cover for jealousy, that only adds to the egg on the collective golf face of the 1950s in the US.

August 14, 2018

TX Progressives tackle political, possible editorial oiliness

The Texas Progressive Alliance looks at oiliness polluting the political, and perhaps editorial, landscape and other issues.

Brains and Eggs offers up highlights July campaign finance reports from key the Texas connection on the DNC reverse shift to take Big Oil donations.

DeSmog Blog discusses in detail how  the fracking industry is cannibalizing itself and causing environmental damage. This blogger suggests that Chronicle biz columnist Chris Tomlinson needs to start reading stuff like this, and more, before writing his next “fracking is great, period” column. (Hints have been dropped before.)

Downwinders at risk keeps beating the drums  for Metroplex air quality.

At the Dallas Observer, Jim Schutze gives resigned-in-disgrace former Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway a final kick in the pants, in part for supporting white folk much more than his own South Dallas constitutency.

David Bruce Collins sees faint hopes among today’s Dems but doesn’t expect realization for a generation or more.

The San Antonio Current says millennials are registering to vote.

SocraticGadfly wants to know more about all the alleged Texas atheists the Lyceum poll on the Cruz-O'Rourke Senate race said the state had.

Off the Kuff highlights July campaign finance reports from key State Senate and State House races.

Gaby Diaz documents her time knocking on doors for the Beto O'Rourke campaign.

Texas Standard says Valley schools are doing well.

But The Texas Tribune notes post-Harvey troubles in Port Arthur ISD schools.

David Brockman calls out the Christian right's politics of cruelty.

Free Press Houston wonders if that city will face a far-right rally.

Mark Smith stands up for public libraries
.

The Rivard Report is moving to new digs. Will it hire new staff?

Irene Vázquez maps out where Houston is affordable.

El Jefe recaps the Jeff Sessions/El Tiempo debacle.

Dian Nostikasari explains why Houston's bike plan matters.

August 13, 2018

Yahweh is an abortionist! Well, kind of sort of

Well, sort of, per Numbers 5, as Almighty God himself (no, really, he's on Twitter) reminded me recently.

I've read the passage more than once, though surely it's been more than a decade since I last looked at it and it didn't jump out then as an abortion proof text.

And, really, it's not.

As part of the Priestly Code section of the Tanakh, it's about purity in and of Eretz Israel. Within that, it's about extramarital sex and extramarital pregnancy, similar to the themes that Ezra articulates about Israel being married to non-Israelites.

But, within all of that, it does not only allow but commands the use of a potential abortifactant as a chemical version of medieval trials by fire or trials by water. I quote:
11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. … 
 16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you.20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”—21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[b] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.” … 
 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.
There you are.

So, again, it's not about abortion per se. It's about ritual purity in general and sexual purity in particular.

And, note that it's about women as inferior.

There's no prescription for the cuckolded husband to bring "the other man" before a priest and to make HIM drink something that will make his nuts drop off if he has foisted a bastard child on the cuckold.

That said, it is pro-abortion in that it says that the life of an unborn baby or fetus counts even less than the wife of that woman.

So, it's sexist.

And, on ritual purity, coming from material edited by Ezra who told people to divorce foreign wives, it's arguably Zionist.

So, don't quote Jeremiah 1:15 and its "Before you formed, in the womb I knew you." Yahweh arguably knew the lesser life of the mother and the greater life of the father, too.

Besides, I'll quote back Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster."

And, beyond that, per Francisco Ayala and human conception's 25-35 percent spontaneous abortion rate, God IS the great abortionist if you believe he exists.