Texas Progressives think there's too many ConservaDems

A plague of ConservaDems erupted over Texas Monday, with Royce West's announcement he was running for Senate and Wendy Davis jumping in the 21st District Congressional race. Surprisingly, given her 2014 iconic image, her website is NOT plastered in pink.

Well, this outpost of the Texas Progressive Alliance tackles that and much more.


Dallas

SocraticGadfly shows and describes why Texas arts aficionados who have any chance to see the late-life Monet exhibit at the Kimball need to go.

Here's more on how climate change's heat will affect the area.


Houston

David Bruce Collins has questions for Metro and bike riding in greater Houston.

Off the Kuff looks at the young candidates for City Council in Houston, where the municipal electorate tends to be pretty old.

Streetsblog cheers Houston's elimination of minimum parking requirements in two near-downtown neighborhoods.

Texas politics

Wingnut leaders of our state deplore large county prosecutors dropping pot cases because the state has legalized hemp and they can't test THC that precisely.

Royce West is in the Senate race, and beyond his baggage and ignoring his one key state senate issue, is in the race as a clear ConservaDem. I'm sure some of Kuff's fanbois, if not Kuff himself, are gloating and perhaps hoping I'll eat crow. No problem. I admitted at the link that I was wrong, and stated why I think I was wrong. You're still wrong about puffing him.

Wendy Davis, perhaps without pink tennis shoes, is back and running for Congress. Why?

Indivisible Houston commits to flipping Texas in 2020. (With who, per my two ConservaDem comments above, plus my past take on the Indivisible movement, remains to be seen.)

Better Texas Blog urges a vote against HJR38, the double secret illegal anti-income tax constitutional amendment.

Juanita applauds former CCA Justice Elsa Alcala's departure from the Republican Party.

Texana

The Texas Observer reports on how the Texas Department of Environmental Quackery wants to let Port Arthur petrochemical plants do more polluting.

The biggest wingnuts in Texas' anti-abortion movement are stealing language from the fight against slavery.

Clayton Williams is still a grifter, this time with West Texas water.


National

In his weekly Dems 2020, Brains has a long pullout from an In These Times piece. It's about how the focus on more small donors has itself given rise to a cottage industry of rounding up small donors, being done by corporations such as ad agencies. Worse yet, a lot of the begging, pleading and groveling for, and hawking of, "bundled" small donors (no other phrase for it) is being done on Fuckbook.

RIP Mark Kleiman, an overrated classist hypocrite in the War on Drugs. The truth is that addiction cuts across race, class and socioeconomic guidelines, so if Kleiman really were worried about pot potency, he should have looked at ritzy pot shops just as much as worrying about Walmart. I first saw this via Popehat's Twitter; Ken, if you're going to write over-the-top, and IMO untrue, encomia (Kleiman was NOT a "giant of his field") I'll Tweet out the reality, as I already did Tuesday night with those links.

Dos Centavos scoffs at the weak Republican response to Trump's latest racist diatribe.
Jim Schutze mixes scoffing, snark and deeper sarcasm in response to all the people saying they'll leave America if Trump is re-elected. Presuming I vote Green again, Jim, I'll be staying, and don't condemn me for costing a bad Democratic candidate. Otherwise, I totally agree with the story. Get a grip, folks. Get politically involved at all levels. And, to loop this back and move beyond Jim? Stop voting for ConservaDems.

White and black evangelical Xn women remain unreconciled after Sparrow in Dallas, and even appear to have moved further apart.

The Lunch Tray wants a real federal response to lunch shaming.