Texas progressives clean out their Mucus, talk the reality of El Paso and borders

The Texas Progressives hopes that if you have children starting school, they're in a district without armed gunmen providing safety from possible outside armed gunmen, and that state GOP wingnuts would get a clue about gun control and student mental health

It also wishes we'd go to a 200-day school year, like other developed nations.


Texas politics

There are now officially THREE Hispanic Democrats who want to replace John Cornyn and two of them who are at least halfway officially for #MedicareForAll. Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez brings not only that but a history of union organizing and more to the race. OTOH, Ramirez did say she would be OK with starting with the old bugaboo of the "public option." I guess Sema Hernandez is going to have to stop relying on air-kissing Bob the Knob O'Rourke, bragging about how well she did in 2018 and coasting on her name to get $5,000 in campaign cash and actually have to file an FEC report before primary time. She also has Sema's "story," being the daughter of an immigrant mother. And, people connected to Bob the Knob have actually not air-kissed but made real contact with her; a lot of them are going to be working her campaign. More at the Chronic.

With perfect, or perfectly bad, timing, Nonsequiteuse beseeches Beto to come back to Texas and run for Senate again. Juanita is singing from the same hymnal. Nancy Ohanian, the biggest nutter among the group that runs the allegedly pergressuve blog Down With Tyranny, even mentioned Tzintzún and STILL wants Beto back. And people wonder why I'm not a Democrat, and at more and more races below the presidential level.

Socratic Gadfly offers an up-to-date analysis of where we're at on Dennis Bonnen vs. Michael Quinn Sullivan, along with guesstimates of what led to the crash and burn between them.

Off the Kuff looks at some finance reports from State Rep incumbents and candidates.

G. Elliott Morris looks at the battle lines for 2020.

Rey Saldana has a San Antonio lesson on climate change.


El Paso and the border

Patrick Crusius is no anomaly. Dan Patrick, at the state level, Gus Bova says, has been blathering anti-immigrant toxicity longer than Trump. Behind that, in turn, is a long Texas history of anti-Mexican border violence, documented by the Observer. Behind THAT, in turn, is 100 years of the Border Patrol and immigration control legislation, documented by LobeLog. As the Observer notes, the eugenics movement, which also caught fire in the US with World War I, the first Red Scare, etc., is wrapped up with this. That includes Zyklon B's use as a delousing agent at the US border. Connect the dots from there.

In related demographic issues, Jim Schutze ruminates at length about fitting in and the changing nature of our suburbs.


Dallas

Karl Richter favorably reviews "Texas Flood," the new bio of Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Former Dallas County Schools head Rick Sorrells gets seven years in the federal pokey for his part in the laundry list of fiscal shenanigans there. I'm still surprised that John Wiley Price's name isn't attached to this. Did Dwaine Caraway's involvement drive him off? Did Sorrells mention something or another but it wasn't enough? Did Our Man Downtown think the scam was too transparent from the start and stayed away?


National

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a federal district court and ruled the Indian Child Welfare Act, which has an Indian-preference rule for adoption of American Indian children, was constitutional. Score this as another loss for AG Kenny Boy Paxton, who like his predecessor, Greg Abbott, bats well below .500 against the feds.


World

SocraticGadfly used the most recent anniversary of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) to give his most detailed refutation yet to some leftist and liberal claims about WWII in the Pacific and the use of the atomic bomb.