Texas progressives look at political mythmaking, plus cop reform, race and more

Lots of stuff to dig into on this week's Roundup, of local and regional, state and national level news. Bad cops, dumb protests and counterprotests, and more are all here.

With that, let's get right to it, starting at the local level:

Dallas

SocraticGadfly has non-RIP sayonaras for two Dallas notables. First, he waves at faded Dallas media legend Jim Schutze, COVID-canned by the Dallas Observer a while back. Second, he says don't let the door hit you on the way out to John Wiley Price elections hack Toni Pippins-Poole.

The Denton County Jail is a COVID cesspool.


Texas

Hank Gilbert, the Dem challenging Louie Gohmert, aka Gohmert Pyle, says a campaign staffer was assaulted by counterprotestors in Tyler. He also charges cops did nothing to protect protestors or try to maintain advance control of the scene. And, Gohmert Pyle, the Maskless Man, has now "got it," and may have infected Bill Barr too.

Bernard and Audre Rapoport would turn over in their graves if they could, and if alive, Bernard would likely make one of his phone calls to the Observer, this one for kissing MJ Hegar's ass.

CD Hooks gives a blow-by-blow account of the clusterfuck of the Texas GOP's online convention. At the Trib, Patrick Svitek has a still-serious but less snarky take.

Off the Kuff has (you guessed it) another Presidential poll to dissect.

Houston Press's Jef Rouner is not only an idiot on the sincerity and depth of conviction of people voting third party, but also on his claim the Tea Party was some sort of a third party, rather than more aggressive Young Guns within Obama-fueled mainstream Republicanism. As I ask aloud about mainstream national newspaper columnists — people get paid to write this?

Prison mental health problems in the time of COVID are real enough for a dead body to remain in a lockdown cell three days.

DosCentavos had another slow week, but he'll get back on it this week. He did tell us about the the latest 2020 campaign tune by Chicano music legend Johnny Hernandez.


Texana

Dan Solomon at Texas Monthly fellates HEB less than a month after fellating oil frackers, for which I took him to the woodshed. Worse, this is largely a rewrite of a story from 2-3 months ago, raising journalistic ethics questions, which TM has had to face before in recent years. (I called out Texas Monthly on both grounds by Twitter, in separate tweets; no response.)

Vanilla Ice, originally from the not-so-gangsta Carrollton, is hitting up Big D soon.

White cultural appropriation is still real.


National-racial justice

It was narrowly avoided over the weekend, but we're eventually going to have two militias shoot each other. Welcome to Amerika, land of the allegedly free and home of the Second Amendment.

Scratch the above. We've now had it in Austin and Garrett Foster is dead. Yes, he may have had a legal right to an AK-47, and he may have pointed it downward. But, he was still walking toward someone with it in hand when he was shot. You know what? I don't want to support protestors bringing guns like that or AR-15s to protests. Period.

Two-thirds of Americans say they support the ongoing racial justice protests. How much of that is real, versus how much is virtue signaling, Whiggish progress-based naivete or similar?

A group of mathematicians is formally boycotting predictive policing and the departments who use it.


National-other

John Roberts ruled correctly again on state church attendance restrictions. I repeatedly tweeted about the anti-Romans 13 sinful rebel megachurch pastors, from an old blog post.

The National Park Service is going to get a lot of repairs backlog funded — by Big Oil. Per discussion on HCN's Facebook page, especially against an apologetic Biden-stanner, this is not good. The general optics aren't good, and, contra him, it in all likelihood WILL lead the NPS to push for more. Remember, it's part of the Department of the Interior, which includes the Bureau of Land Management, aka the other BLM, whose mantra under Obama as well as Bush 43 and Trump was "drill, baby, drill."


National-politics

Berniebros are going to challenge the DNC if its platform doesn't have Medicare for All. And, it doesn't! And, it was CRUSHINGLY defeated.

The Dems' platform also rejects any conditions on aid to Israel. That one was crushed badly as well.

Bernie will surely continue to sheepdog. (A Berner who was a recent gatecrasher of the GP's Facebook group, and who had created a "Bern"-themed suggestion for a new party logo, got butthurt when I mentioned that.) DNC ConservaDems will see the platform vote numbers and write off rebellion risks.

Dan Froomkin takes the NYT to the woodshed for its coverage of AOC vs Ted Yoho.

Jacobin calls Stacy Abrams the new Beto O'Rourke, and no, Beto-stanners, not a compliment.

House Democrats (remember, the majority party) love a bloated Defense budget.