Pages

January 06, 2024

Texas Observer: Just how Texan is it on books?

The Texas Observer has a flub-filled list of Top 20 Texas-related books of the year. Two biggest errors? Listing Jeff Guinn's Koresh/Waco book (good) and a much lesser one by Kevin Cook, while omitting Stephan Talty's is No. 1. No. 2 is omitting the new Larry McMurtry bio by Tracy Daugherty, profiled by the NYT. It's just one more sign of slippage from the Observer, which semi-sadly apparently raised just enough money late last year to save itself from a self-inflicted wrecking ball. 

I did a Tweet, compressed, of the third sentence of the paragraph above a few days ago. No response. Nor any updates to the list. Since this is called "must-read," nope, it's a failure. On Waco, Guinn is indeed a must-read. I'd argue Talty, with a different angle than Guinn is, as well. At minimum, he should have gotten a mention. Cook's book IS much lesser and little more than half the length.

And, how, how, how can you not list a McMurtry bio and one by a fellow Texan, no less? HUGE fail there.

Speaking of, while apparently not going under, they're still not paywalled and still not accepting advertising. And, as I've also said before, they're just not doing anything for me on half of their other stories. 

==

OTOH, for all its advance praise, maybe the Observer and its Austin bookstore flunky were right not to list the McMurtry bio, by fellow Texan Daugherty. Already on page 11, there's a big old geographic error, putting Fort Richardson in the Panhandle, instead of Jacksboro, just down the road southeast from Archer City. That follows seemingly putting the home of grandparents, Benton County, Missouri, NORTH of the Missouri River when it's actually south.

On page 18, no, New World horses didn't go extinct, or "extinct" in this claim, by going across the Bering land bridge. Rather, the American Indian invaders most likely killed them off.

January 05, 2024

More thoughts on Reddit problems

Talking about cis-Saharan vs. trans-Saharan Africa is sure a trigger. I was even called "sis." Guess nobody on r/geography has heard of old Roman Cisalpine Gaul vs Transalpine Gaul.

Speaking of r/geography? That's the entry point.

In past blogging, I've noted how a number of moderators at places like r/academicbiblical lived up to the stereotype of Reddit moderators as Nazis.

The r/geography ones? I don't know if it's a stereotype of a second type of mods or not, but it should be, and they fit it — a stereotype of an indolent moderator.

A posting rule there, besides the Reddit main rules? "NO low-effort/incoherent posts." It's violated all the time, usually for karma farming reasons. I'll have more on that issue later.

Anyway, mods don't do anything about it. Zip, zilch, nada.

Then there's r/nba, with mods having engaged in a new round of hype about future plans, recently, all while remaining unrepentant about cheating on the Reddit blackout this summer. And, both it and r/basketball like to delete posts for no reason; it's not about "keeping our communities safe." Given the note above, with r/nba, I suspect it's moderators playing favorites on breaking news. (I had a post about the James Harden trade deleted.)

And, as I blogged a week ago, r/cardinals has started that shit too. I suspect its moderators simply playing favorites, period.

I'll tackle a bigger issue next month. Actually, two.

The stuff already is sufficing to break me of any possible addiction, which is good because I refused to give in to Hucksterman's Facebook Protect. (Update: Hucksterman has dropped the blockade on me with that again.)

January 04, 2024

Meet Mother Jones' half-baked ideas to "improve" the Endangered Species Act

"5 Big Ideas for Improving the Endangered Species Act" is good overall. That said, three of the ideas of Jackie Flynn Mogeson are already in the current ESA, just need to be used more. I support all of them, especially as they would let the ESA deal with climate change, and preserve habitat for ecosystems, not just species.

But, two of them? Not so much.

First? Carrots for landowners? I'm OK on that PENDING the landowner's overall holdings, previous history, individual vs corporate farm (no ESA carrot for Central Valley pistaschio grower numnutz, for example) and related. And, the author mentioning the spotted owl is strawmanning. Western national forests are the heart of where it lives; private West Coast monocrop forests, like Weyerhauser, couldn't give a shit about spotted owls. 

"Embrace delistings"? Wingnut lawsuits will force them on us anyway, and this is otherwise a "given them an inch, they'll take a mile" issue, so no.

Texas Progressives usher in 2024

SocraticGadfly looks at the number of independent and third-party candidates in the 2024 presidential race and speculates on the chances on it going to the House.

Off the Kuff's main issue with the incoming Whitmire administration is his insistence that we can trust Greg Abbott to reciprocate Whitmire's bipartisanness. 

The Southern Baptist Convention settled, finally, the Paul Pressler sexual abuse lawsuit.

"Substackers against Nazis" call out Hamish McKenzie and the rest of the Substack founding team.

Moms for Liberty hypocrisy has a sidebar in my world. Last name Ziegler? German-Americans broke harder for Trump than any other white ethnic group. 

Check your calendar for the lawsuit that should have been filed today by the US DOJ against Strangeabbott over the border and Senate Bill 4 from the last special session.

 Neil at the Houston Democracy Project offered ways Senator Carol Alvarado and other local elected Democrats could best observe Pledge of Allegiance Day. 

Frank Strong warns that the book bans of 2023 are just the starting point.

The Texas Observer reviews their top 20 stories from a year in which they almost went under.  

Your Local Epidemiologist presents 21 public health accomplishments from 2023.

The Dallas Observer eulogizes the contributors to Dallas' music scene that we lost last year. 

CultureMap reports on a new hybrid electric airplane service coming to regional airports around the state.

January 03, 2024

Reich: Harvard donors could fuel antisemitism with Gay axing

Robert Reich thinks that Harvard's donor class, namely its Zionist members, risk fueling actual antisemitism by chasing out President Claudine Gay. This:

As a Jew, I also cannot help but worry that the actions of these donors – many of them Jewish, many from Wall Street – could fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose, based on the age-old stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world.

Is the nut graf, though the last one in the story.

It's hard to argue with this. That of course wouldn't justify such antisemitism, but, again, it's hard to argue with Reich's fear that it will trigger such antisemitism.

Beyond Reich, it's hard to argue that this doesn't reflect on how things like the "military-industrial complex," or, vis-a-vis foreign policy, what I call theNat-Sec Nutsacks™, are not a stereotype but reality. (They may be a generalization, but sweeping observations that are 51 percent or more true, to riff on informal logic, are generalizations, not stereotypes.) And, as part of that, it reflects on the generalization that, in the Middle East, Zionism, hand in hand with the Christian Religious Right, drives those two.

Also, per Reich, it bodes not so well for Harvard's future:

I can understand the frustrations of these donors. But to use their influence to force the ouster of these university presidents is an abuse of power. It sets a dangerous precedent of mega-donor intrusion into university life.

To go beyond Reich, when the Harvards of the university world stoke fears about Trumpian-like quashing of academic freedom, state government and other attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts in academia and more, these donor actions cut out the ground from underneath them.

(Update: I called it! Bill Ackman said DEI is next in his gunsights.)

==

This afternoon, NPR was discussing the Gay resignation, through an interview with the editor of the Harvard Crimson. And, got almost nothing correct, or at least, hid the reality of Gay's last two months.

For that, we go to Mondoweiss.

First, rather than than tolerating antisemitism, back in November she was trying to censor "from the river to the sea" being used on campus. A month before that, the Harvard Grad Union called on her to get doxxing of Palestinian activists and other anti-Palestinian activities to stop.

Second, there was a raft of McCarthyist (the original one and the guy just booted as Speaker, both) type of original cancel culture behind the recent House hearings by Rep. Elise Stefanik, the ones that hung Gay out to dry. Stefanik, herself arguably actually antisemitic, basically gaslighted Gay and two other university presidents at her hearing.

That said, Gay, along with Penn's Liz Magill and MIT's Sally Kornbluth, offered Stefanik plenty of rope for the self-lynching, Mondoweiss notes, by not challenging her absurdity that "from the river to the sea" is genocidal. 

And, re the #BlueAnon chuds? Many House Democrats played right along.

Finally, the day after the resignation, a new guest commenter at Mondoweiss, a South African-American and fellwo Black American, noted she was both furious FOR Gay for being the target of racial and/or sexual related bullying and also furious AT Gay for putting up with ongoing blatant anti-Palestinian activities at Harvard and even, arguably enabling them. She notes the doxxing affected the safety of Black students at Harvard, among others.

This:

Let me be clear: President Gay was forced out not because she is antisemitic and/or anti-Zionist but because she is not Zionist enough. The Congressional hearing on December 5 was little more than political theater in which right-wing leaders created and seized an opportunity to undermine core tenets of liberal arts institutions and divert attention from the genocide in Gaza.

What else can you say? Well, you can say, as I did above, that all three presidents gave Stefanik et al the rope to hange them after gaslighting them. And as linked via Mondoweiss, Gay's post-resignation inked NYT op-ed STILL doesn't push back against this.

It's even worse than Michael Arria's one quote at Mondoweiss. Per the linked piece above by Aaryan Morrison, Gay's column is groveling to Harvard. 

This, a different quote than Arria's:

Those who had relentlessly campaigned to oust me since the fall often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument.

Indicates how she doesn't get it. The antisemitic smears were of a piece with and intertwined with the racist ones. Gay simply doesn't get the whole issue of weaponized Zionism.

And, tying the two issues together? At The Nation, Dave Zirin says that DEI's lack of objective metrics and such allows Zionists to claim they're being picked on whenever a Palestinian flag is waved in their direction.

That said? Contra Mondoweiss' Philip Weiss, I'm not so sanguine about today's American Jewish youth saving the religion here in the US, especially if this war goes on a lot longer with blank checks from the American political establishment and the American Jewish establishment. Rather, the elders of that Jewish establishment are likely to somewhat self-genocide their own religion. I expect most younger non-Zionist American Jews to abandon even Reform-type Judaism, even for Pesach at a Reform synagogue.

RIP Eddie Bernice Johnson

Or "Peanut Butter and Johnson" as I called the South Dallas AND South Dallas suburbs Congresscritter, who only visited the burbs once in 9 years, and that for a Recovery Act highway project in Cedar Hill. Here's the Trib's obit.

And, my takedown follows.

The biggie? Her running flak for John Wiley Price and Friends of JWP over essentially trying to do a shakedown of Richard Allen over the Dallas Inland Port on I-20 in the late 2000-aughts. The reporting on that, per link in my blog, was some of Jim Schutze's best.

No. 2? Nepotism, and pretty blatant, with Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarships.

No. 3? Per the opening graf, her eventual, 2009, discovery that her district included the Best Southwest suburbs. (Those four suburbs made up one-fourth of the district's population. Maybe she thought they were too White, to be blunt? Reality is Lancaster turned majority-Black at or just before I moved there, DeSoto was majority-minority when I moved and majority-Black by 2009, and Cedar Hill was majority-minority by 2009. Reality is, on this, that contra Gromer Jeffers below, little of the bacon she brought home for Dallas went to the Best Southwest burbs; that 2009 "discovery" was to be at a ribbon-cutting for a highway project that was an Obama America Recovery Act project, not her own doing.)

No. 4? Voted for the Iraq War and continued to support it years later.

That said, as noted here, her "throw weight" in the House was long on the weak side, contra the Trib obit. (Also, the Trib obit mentions the bare bones of the scholarship deal, but nothing about the Inland Port.)

She was pretty much wasted space. (I'm sure the likes of Kuff would have a different take.)

==

Justin Miller at the Texas Observer goes stanning for her in his obit.

First, the "EBJ"? Never thought of it before, but surely consciously riffing on "LBJ"?

Second, he salutes her hand-picking her successor. Justin, another phrase for that is "machine politics." Given the scholarship nepotism issue, it's not surprising, but it is bad optics. He mentions some shortcomings, but none by name, while referencing Gromer Jeffers' obit in the Snooze. Problem? Jeffers, while mentioning the scholarship issue, mentions none of the others. Since the Snooze still bats somewhat from the right, Gromer overlooking the Iraq war might be acceptable; Justin doing so by his silence is not. Not covering the Dallas Inland Port? Not acceptable from Gromer, who, even if he didn't want to write about it, knows it. Also, Gromer doesn't note what I observed from personal experience, that she often seemed to see her district as only including South Dallas itself. And, although she might have gotten sideways with Our Man Downtown more than once, nonetheless, she still ran flak for him and his Friends of JWP on the Dallas Inland Port — which the Snooze in general covered badly when it covered it at all.

Interesting, Jim Schutze couldn't take time at his Mike Miles-fellating Substack to write about EBJ.

More interesting, and showing its slippage on anything more than blogging-brief hard level news since (rightfully) booting Schutze to the curb? The Dallas Observer has bupkis. You can still have Simone Carter come up to the Red on PRO Gainesville, but not write up EBJ's death? OK.

==

Side note: EBJ's family is suing Baylor Scott & White over her death. Sounds like even being semi-rich and semi-famous can't get you decent health care in Merikkka.

January 02, 2024

Top posts of 2023

As usual, not all are FROM 2023, but these were the most read of last year. We'll work from bottom up.

At No. 10, I wrote about the cautionary tale of Jacob de Grom and his being shelved again last summer. (We'll see how Shohei Ohtani as pitcher plays out with the Dodgers in 2025, speaking of.)

No. 9 was also sports-based. I offered my advance thoughts on Adam Silver's in-season NBA tournament. (In the aftermath, I stand by the general idea of "interesting, but not more" from my POV.

No. 8 is from 2020, but has gotten renewed life on Twitter due to Bari Weiss' blatant, genocide-supporting Zionism, as well as Ken White, aka Popehat, discussing this on Substack, where I dropped the link. It was about Jesse Singal stanning for the disgusting actual cancel culture letter in Harper's, at that time.

At No. 7, I looked at the Reddit strike, and a fair amount of hypocrisy from some subreddit moderators as well as Reddit's ownership.

At No. 6, "I come to bury Rod Dreher, not to praise him," after finding out last March that his editorial gravy train was cut off.

No. 5 was a 2018 piece about reforming the World Cup, specifically shootouts.

No. 4 was a Texas Progressives roundup from 2021 that started trending. Maybe it was about Hillary Clinton self-Russiagating?

No. 3? Oh, I had fun with this. It was in response to Sy Hersh's largely wrong, for reasons of ax-grinding, getting used, or more, about the Nord Stream pipeline blowup, which was also, besides his Tiger Woods type "hello world," his debut on Substack. Subsequent posts show he's nailing the monetization angle.

No. 2? I discussed what's wrong with the idea of "vaccinating" against misinformation.

Drumroll ......

At No. 1 was a Carnival of the Godless blogroll roundup from 2009. It was kind of nostalgic in that most of those people aren't around online any more.