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October 21, 2023

US House Speakership: Expect to be here another week

Gym Jordan withdrew from chasing the brass ring yesterday, after losing his third vote, then getting dumped by the House GOP caucus, and at least half a dozen people, including Pete Sessions, the Congresscritter from AT&T, carpetbagging division, are interested. More here on the interested candidates, though that CNN piece has only an even six; USA Today at the first link has more. 

Update: We're up to nine candidates, even with some originally rumored ones like Jody Arrington withdrawing.

Add in more Trump meddling in the race, and we may be here a while. The fact that he openly backed Jordan, and the House GOP caucus rejected him after his third failed vote, should also show that Trump's coattails don't extend everywhere, not even in his national GOP of today. Also, the far right within the House GOP, and their PACs and super PACs, ginning up a barrage of email and phone calls against House GOP members who wouldn't support Jordan, reportedly including death threats, is itself an issue.

I'm not kidding about the be here a week. The GOP caucus isn't voting until Monday night and who knows what happens after this.

What happened Tuesday, Oct. 24? Minnesota's Tom Emmer got the nomination in the caucus, then, after hearing 25 or more wingnuts would vote against him in the floor, dropped out. Back to square negative one.

For the sake of blocking Warmonger Joe's proposed $100 billion bribery of Israel and Ukraine, I hope (and no, this ain't horseshoe theory) that the House GOP remains a clusterfuck, can't get a new Speaker, and that Patrick McHenry doesn't get given full powers as interim Speaker. As of Thursday evening, McHenry was not getting such a grant, to last until the new House is sworn in. At the same time, McHenry said he wasn't taking the leadership on any legislation without such an explicit grant. Let us hope the House GOP will do the shutdown Nov. 17 rather than OK the Ukraine portion of that bribery. Problem is, House Democraps, including the Fraud Squad, will give McHenry such a grant, and let the Rethuglicans off their hook, so Warmonger Joe's $100 billion bribery bill gets passed.

October 20, 2023

Warmonger Joe doubles down on linking Israel and Ukraine, and other stupidity

I heard a bit of his speech from the Oval on my radio while driving home, then read about it more.

And, he's full of shit.

On the radio, he said this would keep troops out of harm's way.

That's as US troops in Iraq and Syria (who shouldn't be there) have been attacked in recent days. This speech will only escalate that, beyond the fact that we're intervening in the Israel-Palestine fight.

On the story, he talks about us being "a beacon to the world" as a defender of democracy. This from the man who kisses Muhammad bin Salman's ass regularly in hopes of cheaper Saudi oil prices.

And, of course, the bottom line is "more bribery":

The president's aid proposal, still in flux, could amount to some $100 billion, including a whopping $60 billion more for Ukraine, sources familiar with the draft have told ABC News.

Let us hope (and no, this ain't horseshoe theory) that the House GOP remains a clusterfuck, can't get a new Speaker, and that Patrick McHenry doesn't get given full powers as interim Speaker. As of yesterday evening, Gym Jordan was not withdrawing from the Speaker's race and McHenry was not getting such a grant, to last until the new House is sworn in. At the same time, McHenry said he wasn't taking the leadership on any legislation without such an explicit grant. Let us hope the House GOP will do the shutdown Nov. 17 rather than OK the Ukraine portion of that bribery. Problem is, House Democraps, including the Fraud Squad, will give McHenry such a grant, and let the Rethuglicans off their hook, so Warmonger Joe's $100 billion bribery bill gets passed.

(Update, Oct. 21: Gym Jordan has withdrawn, and at least half a dozen people, including Pete Sessions, the Congresscritter from AT&T, carpetbagging division, are interested. Well, this fits in with my hopes. Add in more Trump meddling in the race, and we may be here a while. The fact that he openly backed Jordan, and the House GOP caucus rejected him after his third failed vote, should also show that Trump's coattails don't extend everywhere, not even in his national GOP of today. Also, the far right within the House GOP, and their PACs and super PACs, ginning up a barrage of email and phone calls against House GOP members who wouldn't support Jordan, reportedly including death threats, is itself an issue.)

At Mondoweiss, Mitchell Plitnick compares this linkage of Israel and Ukraine vs Palestine and Russia to Shrub Bush's infamous "axis of evil."

Voters agree with me more than Warmonger Joe, too:


 

#DuopolyExit

But, we know that Warmonger Joe isn't listening to these polls. While not a majority, a 40-percent minority, as reported by Responsible Statecraft, had similar thoughts on Ukraine a full year ago.

Meanwhile, people from State Department staffer Josh Paul (with other "striped coats" in sympathy) to ADL researcher Stephen D. Rea (no, really) are resigning from the government or their organizations over the hard line on Palestine.

Seriously, I'll take that first, the shutdown. I'm that fucking tired of this, and no, contra USA Today, Warmonger Joe did NOT make his case for bribing either Israel or Ukraine.

October 19, 2023

Texas Progressives talk White greed, White stupidity and more

This corner of the Texas Progressives stands with Palestine as we bring you this week's Roundup, personally curated.

The Trib writes about the vouchers bill the Senate just passed. Contra Brandon Creighton, "the market" doesn't exist or work the way he says, and without metrics, individual parents can't make some version of "the market" work anyway. And, since state funding to public schools is based in part on WADA, it WILL cut funding to them. Let's add that private schools are not required to offer special education, are not required to offer LEP services, are not required to offer bus transportation services, but can discriminate on the basis of economic class and other things. 

The Senate's ban on private vax mandates includes ... doctors' offices and clinics. "I'm here to get my COVID shot" from an antivaxxer nurse? Let us hope that, as in the regular session, the House 86's this just like vouchers. It's also "interesting" that Kelly Hancock, after protesting this portion of the bill, nonetheless voted for the final version. Guess one act of "rebellion" this year was enough.

Kerr County Commissioner Rich Paces is costing the county $250K in election costs because he's a conspiracy theorist, but, contra the story and the county GOP head, he's not alone. I mean, he had to get two other votes to agree with him on the commissioners court, for starters. (Shock me that Bob Hall lurks in the background.) Also shock me that it's the old White folks — mainly retirees who moved to Tex-ass from out of state — ginning up the stupidity in Kerrville.

TCEQ says it's OK for petrochemical cancer alleys to keep on keeping on.

SocraticGadfly looks at Wayne Christian following Susan Combs into dunes sagebrush lizard hating antienvironmentalism.

RIP Will Hurd's presidential campaign —and in all likelihood, his future electoral politics history.

Longform from the Monthly: Greedy White folks grasping to get Black-owned land without clear modern title south of College Station. Bonus points: Involves Seth Rich conspiracy theorist legal beagle and Booger County Mafia lover Ty Clevenger.

Dos Centavos has a few thoughts about one of the Mayoral debates and Greg Abbott's special session voucher and border schemes on another edition of Thoughts on Viernes.

Chris Hooks looks at Former Fetus Forever Fuckwad Jonathan Stickland meeting with racist Nick Fuentes, and how the people attacking Stickland are themselves being attacked, by the same types of people who "Jew-baited" former Speaker Joe Straus to his face.

Off the Kuff looks at the 30 day finance reports for Houston Mayor and City Controller candidates. 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said that despite playing by all the rules, State. Rep Ann Johnson is being attacked by corrupt AG Ken Paxton.

US Anesthesiology Practices is another reason the US needs a British-style NHS, not "just" single-payer national health care.

Postal Service gets busted lying for what it has done, or not, in preventing heat-related illness and death for carriers.

Vegan ranching in Brazoria County. Yes, you read that right.

Diana Nyad, liar.

Reform Austin notes that Houston's domestic violence gun homicides rose 60 percent after permitless carry was passed.

The Fort Worth Report documents what you can do if you encounter a hate group in a public place.

The TSTA blog connects the push for vouchers to the racists and anti-Semites behind Pale Horse Strategies. 

The Austin Chronicle finds the cringiest, most embarrassing proposal of the legislative session.

October 18, 2023

Tex-ass const amdts: Just Say No — energy fund

When I posted a few weeks ago about why Texans should vote "no," or even more loudly, "NO," on just about all the constitutional amendments on next month's ballot, I promised to do more in-depth breakouts on a few, and here we go.

The main reason I oppose this, Prop. 7, is Wayne Christian's and Dan Patrick's still ongoing blathering, ie, lies, about how renewable energy cause the Uri blackouts. A state energy fund, per the amendment's language, is nothing less and other than a handout to the fossil fuel industry, as renewable energy doesn't have electric generation plants, and it offers no help to renewable electricity battery storage. And, the Legiscritters who drafted this particular amendment all know that, too.

Friend Chris Tomlinson at the Chronicle agrees in much more detail. In essence, the would-be bribe to power generators is a way to try to bind them to building natural-gas plants even if — and WHEN, as they told the Lege — they don't want to. So, a handout to the Dunn/Wilks crowd.

And a form of virtue signaling.

Note: While Chris and I were both thinking of natural gas, Capital and Main says that coal-fired power plant construction is still happening, and yes, in the US and Europe.

Bamford: #Russiagate was really #Israelgate

Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence

Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence by James Bamford
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

MUST read if you're not in the US duopoly political box. AND, of more relevance than ever as Oct. 7 plays out.

 This is a major expansion on my Goodreads review of this book, especially timely with the US presidential election cycle heating up, the recent Israel-Hamas clashes and more.

The book is great, but with a semi-incorrect title. It’s really about “government fail” much more than “spy fail.” (OTOH, it's not fully incorrect, and it is eye-grabbing.) Much of the book is about Israeli snooping in the US, detected by the FBI or others, and then presidents of both political parties, going back to Jimmy Carter refusing to call an Israeli-aided South African nuke test what it was, not doing anything. That's as, today, Warmonger Joe Biden refuses to talk about the "triggers" for Hamas to invade Israel.

Even before getting to the first actual “Spy Fail,” we have Sony execs going racist on Obama in text messages, and worse, they’re Jewish Sony execs. I personally thought this was laughable at first, disgusting at second, hypocritical at third.

Also before this, Bamford notes that North Korea was NOT a giant Potemkin village, let alone one without a façade. Bamford doesn't buy into the normal bipartisan foreign policy establishment, or Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, talking points, tis clear.

Re the Israeli spying, I had not heard any of the story of Arnon Milchan's various nefarious actions before.

The biggie is something related to Russiagate, a biggie, and real, and largely suppressed in discussion, and seemingly largely ignored by BlueAnon Russiagate detectives like Marcy Wheeler. And, that was Israel’s involvement. Apparently, its Unit 8200 had hacked Wikileaks and/or Guccifer 2.0’s home, the GRU. And Bibi’s personal man Friday, Isaac Moho, was feeding this to Roger Stone. Israel knew about the DNC hacks before anybody outside Russia, Bamford notes.

Per what I just posted, I searched Emptywheel’s site and got zero hits for “Isaac Molho.” Nor did I get any for Bibi’s important minister without portfolio at this time, Tzachi Hanegbi.

I didn’t realize Adam Schiff (who I don’t care for, for other reasons) was a handpicked protégé of Howard Berman and Henry Waxman. And, with his position as either chairman or ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee, it makes me wonder how much he knew about all of this, whether in real time or later. Bamford doesn't speculate.

That said, it wasn’t all Israel in 2016. The UAE, Bamford shows, in terms of buying influence, was running its own string of polo ponies with both Clinton and Trump.

But, here, we’re back to Spy Fail. Bamford notes FBI and Secret Service were bush league on not uncovering United Arab Emirates bagman George Nader earlier. Nader first plumped for Clinton, then, seeing Trump start to surge, played both sides of the street while working more and more the Trump side. Nader was only nailed because of having juvenile sex porn on a smartphone, even though having previous felony conviction on this ground.

Bamford then pivots back to Russiagate to close. Here, the “Spy Fail” is not missing something, but inventing something out of nothing, and we’re talking about Maria Butina, and the desire of the FBI to nail some Russian coonskin to a wall, mixed with an odious fame-lusting DC prosecutor. Before that, of course, Bamford reminds us of #BlueAnon media like David Corn hounding and hassling Butina, the same David Corn who’s a warmonger as I type. Bamford closes by reminding us that Butina now sits in the Duma.

Outside the covers of the book, literally? I note all the blurbs are for "James Bamford and his bestselling books," and NOT this book. I think the reason is obvious, and frankly, I wonder how hard it was to get this published.

Bamford has long been skeptical of the nation of Israel. As long ago as the USS Liberty in the Six-Day War, per his Wiki page. (He was a Naval intelligence analyst during Vietnam, so has semi-firsthand knowledge.) I agree, based in additional part on later incidents. Per another section of his page, there's more reason to loathe Ruth Bader Ginsburg, too.

==

Update, Nov. 3: At The Nation, Bamford says Oct. 7 could be called "All Quiet on the Gaza Front," and he goes on to tie this to, among other things, Sheldon Adelson's big 2015 Las Vegas confab that ties in with Russiagate being in part Israelgate. The bulk of the piece lists issues also detailed in SpyFail.

View all my reviews

October 17, 2023

Strangeabbott expands razor wire war

Now, he's got the Texas-New Mexico state line wired, as well as the Rio Grande where Texas borders various Mexican states. More here. As I said on Twitter, pretty soon, Wallbuilder Joe will agree that there needs to be a wall between sections of Texas and New Mexico.

It really isn't New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's place to comment, so I don't blame her for not doing so. It's Biden's place to comment saying he's obtaining an injunction against this.

October 16, 2023

Tex-ass constitutional amdts: Just Say No — homestead exemption

When I posted a few weeks ago about why Texans should vote "no," or even more loudly, "NO," on just about all the constitutional amendments on next month's ballot, I promised to do more in-depth breakouts on a few, and here we go.

I oppose the homestead exemption for various reasons. 

First is the jump from $40K to $100K is just way too big a jump. Something like $65K would be better.

Second? No COLA. At both the state and federal level, all sorts of things like this — minimum wage, amount of income  subject to FICA taxes, etc etc., — should have a COLA as part of them.

Third? The hypocrisy, similar to that of California's infamous Proposition 13. Economic conservative true believers claim to love capitalism — until their ox is gored by it.

Fourth? For people who rent houses, their landlords aren't required to pass it on. And, apartment owners aren't given relief, left alone relief with the requirement to pass it on.

A few more thoughts on Cornel West

I was planning on posting this a week or two ago, but a variety of other things giving me a full blogging plate made me wait. And West's announcement that he was ditching the Greens to run independent made me glad to have waited. I wound up doing a separate piece on that, questioning his reasoning, and that of Peter Daou if involved. (A follow-up on that piece, on that link, indicates that Daou is involved, or if one will, is enabling, in that sense, West's wilder ideas on political campaigning.)

UPDATE, Oct. 27, 2023: Less than a full month after Peter Daou became West's campaign manager, and only three weeks after signing off on West leaving the Green Party, Daou is OUT, allegedly for health reasons, according to a Tweet from West, as reported by Independent Political Report.

I am reminded of the VERY interesting book, "The Commissar Vanishes."

"We regret that Comrade Kamenev has resigned from the Politburo for health reasons," I picture.

And, as I type this at 10:45 p.m., 10 hours after West's tweet, Daou has no tweet of his own, though he did quote tweet a tweet from earlier in the day, talking about PTSD about growing up in the bombing of Lebanon being triggered by the situation in Gaza.

Possible? Yes. I'm still somewhat skeptical that this is all the story there is, though. And, if that's the full explanation, yes, I know that PTSD is about jumbled emotions and much more, but it's still a snap decision, it seems. That said, as I told Jordan at IPR, she shouldn't expect a formal statement from West, I said, when emailing her Daou's Tweet.

I said, a couple of months ago, when West decided to run as a Green, and not with Nick Brana's sleazy Movement for a People's Party, that he seemed to be head and shoulders above other filed, announced but not yet official, and other would-be Green candidates. 

That was before the allegations about back taxes AND back child support came out. West notably punted to his accountant on the taxes issue, and said accountant was quiet. West also notably has said nothing period about the child support. Actually, on the Daily Beast, he says plenty but it's actual nothing.

While I don't favor non-payment of taxes, whether by businesses or individuals, and whether in the 1 percent or at lower levels on the individual side, in a sense, that's a lesser issue. Per the link above, that's nowhere near a nothingburger amount on child support. That said, the tax issue is not a nothingburger, either, in part because it comes from three different time frames (the Beast had less detailed information).

As for his defenders saying that he was just sharing the wealth of his income? 

  • That's not an excuse;
  • It sounds like Lady Bird excusing LBJ's womanizing by talking about how much he had to share.

Just a bit more on last week's announcement. Jill Stein, with full link to long Tweet here, is NOT following him. Instead, she and Ajamu Baraka, her 2016 Veep candidate, are beating the bushes for more candidates, presumably seeing the lackluster crop otherwise. (Sorry, but it's true, other Green prez candidates.) Other former candidates would include Howie Hawkins, I'm sure. I doubt she will. Maybe Baraka seeks the top spot?

For the man in general? Sactown Magazine has a long (albeit semi-hagiographic if not beyond the semi) bio of him from childhood up, written during the 2019-20 primaries season when he was stumping for Bernie Sanders.

The story reminds us that, per some #BlueAnon calling out the variety of talk shows that Sanders hit up, West has appeared not only with Joe Rogan in 2020, but in years further back, even with Sean Hannity.

It also notes his feud with other Black thought leaders, including former acolyte Michael Eric Dyson and Ta-Nehisi Coates, over West's early, by 2011, and very public, souring on Barack Obama as president.

That said, on something like this?

Last election cycle, Sanders’ loss to Hillary Clinton was hard. This year, West is sanguine. “Sanders has already won in terms of shaping the discourse. Everybody’s got to talk about his issues now, whether you agree or disagree,” he says. His analysis of the hectic Democratic field, with a swirling eddy of candidates vying for attention, is pretty benevolent.

"Naive" is a word I'd use before "sanguine." Or maybe something else. It's like his going to MPP first, not passing it and heading directly to Green-ville. (I'm an independent leftist who won't relabel as Green until after I see the 2024 convention play out, if that does lead me to come back.)

Speaking of? I'm not voting for Warmonger Joe, but I reserve the right to undervote the presidential race. I did it in 2020, and I've touted rational undervoting in newspaper op-eds.

I'm not voting for West, I can say that. Per my piece a week ago about his switch, I question his grasp of the political process. (I also expect, per Texas' ballot access laws, I won't be able to vote for him even if I wanted to.)

He's got other issues. Announcing his original MPP campaign on Rumble? And on Russell Brand's show? 

That said, West's platform is in many ways more radical than the Green Party. One thing in particular I note is that he seems to want a British-style NHS. I totally agree. Whether that's any factor in the split with the GP and two-time presidential candidate DOCTOR Jill Stein and Howie Hawkins 2020 advisor DOCTOR Margaret Flowers or not, I don't know. I DO KNOW that both support Physicians for a National Health Plan's version of Medicare for All, which leaves current fee-for-service medicine in place, albeit while trying to ameliorate it. 

To put it another way? It's a platform that nobody who listens to Russell Brand on Rumble would support across the spectrum.

To put it another way? It's like Kinky Friedman running for guv and supporting both legalized marijuana and prayer in school. We all know how that went.

And, with all this in mind, especially the new news, I am highly unlikely to sign Cornel's petition here in Tex-ass. 

Update: Don't forget (as I did until recently) that West signed that odious Harper's 2020 cancel culture letter.