Counterpunch drops an antisemitic dime

Disgusted by Counterpunch running actual antisemitism, not anti-Zionism.

David Yearsley, who is a regular contributor at Counterpunch, as in for more than 15 years, ran a piece about the intersection of O.J. Simpson and culture, "Sounding Out O.J." At the end is an embedded video of a Jay-Z rap.

At 2:36, it says:

You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America?

That's antisemitic, period and end of story. Not anti-Zionist, antisemitic.

Dude is a tenured music prof at Cornell and a published author. I have no doubt he knows the full video, especially given the way he teed it up.

No mention of football or murder is made in what I consider the towering musical monument to Simpson erected in 2017: Jay-Z’s “Story of O.J.” I cannot find its refrain—“I’m not Black, I’m O.J.”—anywhere before this song engraved his epitaph in sound seven years before his death.

I listened through to that point to hear the refrain he mentions. And, did a WTF. Yearsley nowhere says something like: "It's good except for this," or, "I'm posting this ONLY for the OJ angle; I disagree with Jay Z's antisemitism," or anything similar.

We're getting nearer to deblogrolling Counterpunch.

And, this is of importance ever since Oct. 7. To have ethical standing in calling out Zionists for conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism, I have to call out actual antisemitism.

And, as part of that, I Tweeted both Counterpunch and St. Clair. (We follow each other.) No response. I emailed Yearsley. No response.

Green Party notes: Texas Greens convention

First, per the TXGP report on presidential voting, it's sad that there is no Travis precinct nor a Dallas one. See below for more.

Second, gag me with a fucking spoon. Hunter Crow is officially in permacandidate territory with his run for State Board of Education District 11, after his 2022 pseudo-Green run for the RRC and 2020 for Tarrant County Community College District board.

Third, I've said elsewhere, but Eddie Espinoza for the RRC is a good candidate. No idea about Robin Lee Vargas. No website. Apparently no Facebook. She does have a "donorbox" to get money. Even less idea about OC Caldwell 1 for SBOE District 10, for whom I don't even get Google hits. Per the Secretary of State website, that's it. Yep, no Greens for statewide office other than Stein and Espinoza. Not even with the Paxton-led sacking of all three GOP incumbents on the Court of Criminal Appeals. Not even with Democrats running an open ConservaDem for Senate in Colin Allred. "Congrats," pre-emptively and in advance, in missing the 2 percent cutoff in November. Best of luck in 2026. (Compare Libertarians, who, while not as strong as a decade ago, are still far stronger than Greens.) 

I know, I know, there's the filing fees. But for Senate? There's nobody with Green interest, or even a non-Conserva version of a Dem willing to be a scalawag? No GP leaning lawyer willing to pony up for a CCA run? 

Two years ago, there were three statewide candidates with no presidential race. This year, just one "organic" statewide candidate plus the presidential race. The two SBOE candidates are also good, as the party needs more candidates in general, but overall? This is backsliding.

Fourth and related? The state party bragging about chapters starting in Travis and Dallas counties. On the latter, there was one there 15-plus years ago when I lived there. For various reasons, it imploded. I think a restart effort was made a few years ago, but that then imploded. (COVID may have been a factor.) Travis? Why Keep Austin Weird hasn't had a Green Party chapter even as Dems have drifted neoliberal for years is beyond me. Denton Greens seemed OK in size for Denton County when I saw Howie there in 2020.

Fifth? Jill Stein got the state Green Party prez nod easily. Jasmine Sherman, about whom I've written briefly before, was second. Jorge Zavala, the other party-certified (not going there, not going there, on "certified") candidate, discussed with Sherman, was third. Must be kind of embarrassing to alleged Green Party co-founder Randy Toler (that's highly disputed, his claim, also at that link) to finish fourth. Side note: David Bruce Collins was a Sherman delegate there, I presume, since he's a Sherman delegate at the national convention.

Had never before heard of this fucking Daví, complete with accent mark, who, born DeShaun Davis, claims to be the "Ävatar of Earth" (with umlaut) and is already in as much of fucking nutbar territory as Zavala. But wait, per his website bio linked there, it gets better:

During the global shutdown and pandemic of 2020, Daví experienced a spiritual transformation where he began developing the ability to communicate with animals.

Oy. Just oy. And per that claim? Join Kinky Friedman in a race for Dogcatcher of Utopia with a skill like that.

Texas Progressives talk elections items

The Texas Progressives hope that you're a real environmentalist with belated Earth Day thoughts while saying good-bye to the good, the bad and the ugly of the late Daniel Dennett.

Bibi and his ZioNazis looking to start WWIII? The government of Israel recently bent regulations to allow red heifers (Yes, THOSE red heifers) in to the country, and they're coming from right here in Tex-ass.

SocraticGadfly, having seen that H-E-B has arrived on the north side of the Metroplex, decided to indulge nostalgia, if nothing else, but found it (and the H-E-B cult) crushed by reality when compared with shopping options he already has.

Too late for things like the Sutherland Springs mass shooting, of course, but I welcome the Army largely getting rid of the possibility of discharge instead of court martial for soldiers accused of violent crimes. And, given the Sutherland Springs shooter was actually in the Air Force, ALL military branches should have such a policy.

Rephrasing the Trib? Not a single Democrat in Texas voted against continuing the proxy war in Ukraine. That said, a couple of Dems in Texas were part of the 37 overall to vote against more money for Israel without strings attached; sadly, the ConservaDem running for Senate, Colin Allred, was not part of them. Dem votes in Texas and nationally were slightly better on the TikTok ban, but Allred again voted ConservaDem. The Congressional Progressive Caucus remains the Pergressuve Cucks on Russia-Ukraine. Sidebar reminder: Texas Greens have NO candidate for the U.S. Senate. More on that later.

DEI administrators getting the boot from state universities? Wingnuts in government aren't going to help out by clarifying guidelines; they're happy with fear ruling the roost.

Tarrant County DA José Garza is under wingnut attack under the Lege's so-called "rogue prosecutor" law.

Off the Kuff published two more HCAD Board candidate interviews, with Melissa Noriega for position 2 and Kathy Blueford-Daniels for position 1.

The San Antonio Report introduces the Bexar County candidates for their appraisal district board. 

The Fort Worth Report attended a candidates forum for Tarrant Appraisal District Board hopefuls.

Torchy's vs Velvet battle going nationwide, in a Monthly long read. Fortunately, the piece notes the angle of both companies' founders, like that of most Mexican fast-ish food chains, being Anglos. 

WTF is Alex Jones doing in Terlingua?

Mother Jones flunky David Corn still pushing Russiagate.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project posted about his letter sent to each member of Houston City Council asking about the Republican Chair & Republican majority on Council's so-called Public Safety Committee. 

Your Local Epidemiologist goes over the research on the "hygiene hypothesis" for kids' health. (And, it looks like YLE is becoming a "brand.")

 Texas 2036 has bad news about how our students are doing in math. 

The Observer warns that the recent Panhandle wildfire is a harbinger.

New thoughts on Chaco Canyon

 

This piece in an anthropology journal, though focused on agriculture at Pueblo Alto, is very interesting in other ways.

The biggie? I'd long ago read Steve Lekson's "The Chaco Meridian," the biggest proponent of a quasi-imperial "Chaco culture," complete with looking at a vast network of roads running as far north as the San Juan, south to somewhere near today's Thoreau, New Mexico, etc.

What if thse weren't roads? What if they were stone watercourses to aid in tricking water to the Chaco complex? Now, Wetherbee Dorshow admits that in some cases, we could have places built as roads where the water-funneling came along for the ride. But, they also say that people like Lekson might be like Percival Lowell and his canals on Mars on how many roads they claim to have found. Dorshow doesn't use that analogy themselves, but it came to my mind.

Per research in the Bluff area by Winston Hurst, some roads in the Chaco area most likely are roads — roads that connected local sites in a 20-30 mile radius. But that still doesn't mean they were built for an "imperial Chaco" development.

Or, we may find the flip side to be true. Additional research may indicate that the "Chaco phenomenon" was exported to places like Cedar Ridge as well as Mesa Verde.

Anyway, I think the "Chaco Meridian" idea springs from an old tussle in Anasazi archaeoastronomy between maximizers and minimizers.

It's also likely that, although they had some influences on each other, Mogollon and Ancestral Puebloan cultures evolved largely independently, and that it was partially if not primarily coincidence that both peaked at about the same time. And, related to that? The Hurst link makes clear that, just in the Four Corners, in the "culmination" period of the 1200s before dispersal of Ancestral Puebloans to Hopi, Rio Grande Valley, etc., that different strategies for defense, etc., were being followed at different sites.

None of this is to say that pre-Columbian American Indians didn't have empires or similar. Look at the Triple Alliance ("Aztec"). On a smaller land scale before them, the Mayans. The Inca in South America. But, archaeologists have to be careful not to read things into the record.

==

The second is not limited to Chaco, though that is its focus, but rather to Anasazi culture in general. And, it's that cannibalism-pusher Christy Turner, to be blunt, cheats on some of his own research classifications of some individual sites as surely cannibalistic when they're missing one site criterion from a list of which he says sites much have all criteria to count. Kerriann Marden notes that such is Turner's domination of the discussion that, in the past, even a Kurt Dongoske has felt he had to respond to all of Turner's talking points, rather than questioning his methodology or conclusions.

Beyond that, the piece's focus is that we still probably don't know enough about Chacoan burial practices to say what is typical and what is atypical. Look at the United States, after all. Just 170 years ago, pre-Civil War, embalming was not a deal. Then it was. And today, and even going back about 20 years ago, now, cremation is the most common inhumation practice.

RIP Joe Tillotson

No, nobody famous, and not a takedown obit.

Joe wasn't perfect, but when I was at the Today Newspapers group years and years ago, I considered the then mayor of Lancaster a personal friend. He did a lot of good for the city in many ways. I didn't know all the places he lived, let alone that his great-great-grandfather fought at San Jacinto. An interesting story.

It does leave me nostalgic about my time in Lancaster. The city park, with new library and main fire station, was arguably the best use of the land on North Dallas, even if the fire station part of it, especially, didn't quite fit the bill of original plans for the site.

The Dallas Inland Port and related things? Yes, it was in many ways the best use of much of Lancaster's land — at least, best use in terms of the current operations of the American economy.

I don't know how long he remained in the corner of the (in)famous Larry D. Lewis as Lancaster ISD superintendent after I left. However long he did, it was too long. That would be the one real blot on his escutcheon, to use the old phrase.

==

Flip side? Even if a bit naive at times, like over the Ten Mile Creek flood, he had the city's best interest in other ways. That includes the school district under Lewis' predecessor, the widely perceived as racist Bill Ward, per this old Dallas Observer piece. (I recall the incident, the school board meeting, and the difficulty in getting anything close to a straight answer out of Ward.) Sadly, when doing teh Google earlier today, I came across a "Memories of Lancaster, Texas" Facebook group, where someone had posted his obit. One White commenter went racist by saying he turned Lancaster into a ghetto. While not saying said commenter is AS racist as white folks whose actions are noted in the Observer piece, she IS racist by what I see from that comment alone. And ignorant. (Said person, per her profile, now lives in Kaufman County. Sounds about right.)

Wilmer: A blast from the past! Albeit miswritten

Very interesting longform piece at the Dallas Observer about the town's history of abuse of involuntary annexations and related issues.

I remember when UP started developing its Dallas Railport. I remember when Our Man Downtown, John Wiley Price, being paid Perot campaign money to protect its railport on the Santa Fe next to Alliance Airport in Fort Worth, did everything he could to gut it, and if not, to try to force local communities to hire Friends of JWP as subcontractors for local development tied to that. (I heard more about that in Hutchins than Wilmer.) I remember JWP trying to gut Richard Allen's Dallas Inland Port, too, also at Perot bidding.

Part of the blast from the past? Mention of the "Wilmer Citizen."

I was unaware of this Joe Aldrich starting this website "Wilmer Citizen." I WAS pretty sure that there was an old blog by that name, and there it still is, and pretty sure that it had, in its early days, some sort of backdoor semi-connection with the convicted felon Joey Dauben, who is nowhere mentioned by the Observer. Most commenters on early posts from the site, back in 2008, are either Joey or groupies of his, from what I can tell, starting with how many have deleted or hidden blogger profiles. Also, and related? The old racist (or it at least used to be, as detailed in my Dauben link) Ellis County Press, an early landing site of Dauben's before firing him, is in links in the right hand rail. In any case, it's NOT a website, contra the Observer's author. It's a blog that's updated 1-2x a month.

So, even if Joey Dauben is not directly connected? I'd take half of what's on there with big grains of salt.

There's further reason I worry about the Observer puffing up some blogger who doesn't have a journalism background and doesn't write regularly. Even with Dauben, who did have a quasi-background in journalism, and who wrote profusely, you  still have someone who makes insinuations that get to the edge of libel (and often, probably went over that edge, but he had no money to be sued over). And, you had the Observer giving him a fawning profile in 2011. That's why I look askance at Christian McPhate even doing this level of puffery of Aldrich.

As for the issue at hand? Rather, per its backstory?

Anybody who lived in either Wilmer or Hutchins 15 years ago knew that its growth potential was in logistics. Ditto for Lancaster, between UP and Richard Allen. As long as the tax money is being put to good use (including wide, strong-based streets to and from these logistics warehouses), isn't that a good bottom line? And, if some elected officials sold their land to commercial developers, as long as the real estate version of insider trading didn't happen, isn't this America? And, if you ran for mayor and lost? (Aldrich did in 20-12, and you won't find that in the story. He also was (is? can't tell from Wilmer's website and I don't know if Bizpedia's listing is current) on the board for the Wilmer Community Development Corporation. That means, depending on when he served, he might have been in a position of authority when this forcible annexation was being abused. I think that would be relevant.

As for the details of tax abatements for UP and the returns on that? $1.5 million in net revenue, if rounded up, is $2 million, which is "millions," plural. The 30K jobs? UP didn't promise all the employees would live in Wilmer and there's no way it could do that. I don't know if it's delivered on that; the promise appears to be vague enough it's hard to measure. And, people working in Wilmer could be living in Hutchins, Lancaster, Dallas, Ferris, Combine, Seagoville or unincorporated Dallas County. After all, there's still lots of that, per map below.

Beyond that? There's other reasons people might work in Wilmer but not live there.

One is the now-absorbed Wilmer-Hutchins ISD. I don't know how much better the schools there have gotten since Dallas ISD took it over. I don't know how much newer any schools facilities have gotten. But, per what I mentioned above? If I had kids, there are other places I'd live first.

Second, Wilmer, like Hutchins to its north, is prone to flooding on its east side in the Trinity bottoms. (So is much of unincorporated Dallas County.) Speaking of, even if it's not delivered on all its vague promises, do you want the inland port of Union Pacific, along with the logistics sites, or do you want Hutchins State Jail, as your driver of growth?

 

And, maybe if JWP hadn't knifed it in the back along with the Inland Port, it would have delivered more. And, weirdly, McPhate links to Schutze stories about said knifing. I can't tell if he totally supports their angle, more supports than objects, more objects than supports, or what.

If I had to put a bottom line on the story? I'd say Wilmer civic leaders of the past 15 years before 2022 were about 40 percent civic-minded, 40 percent personally grifting and 20 percent semi-clueless about legal restrictions. And, I'd say Aldrich is about 50 percent concerned citizen, 35 percent butt-hurt failed grifter and 15 percent quasi-Daubenite winger.

Sidebar: Did not know former Hutchins Mayor Artis Johnson (from whom I heard the same stuff about JWP's shakedown attempts as did Jim Schutze) was stupidly indicted. Fortunately, Craig Watkins dismissed charges shortly before leaving office.

Willing to see the Green Party finish imploding; willing to give it a push

That, the header, is the main reason, other than her own hypocrisy, I keep bagging on Green Party presidential candidate and likely nominee Jill Stein. The "her own hypocrisy," of course, being her refusal to divest from mutual funds with pharmaceutical, oil, tobacco, and defense stocks in their portfolios.

But, there's more.

I'd said the Green Party was past its best-buy date after the 2020 election season. I held out for four more years than the likes of Brandy Baker and Mark Lause, the latter formally noting the party was dead after 2016 (and Stein's lesser evilism recount). I did mention, in a 2016 postmortem, things that needed to be improved. And, they weren't. Add in the various transgender/transsexual issues, which culminated with my saying "a pox on both your houses" (which I say as a non-twosider on this issue in general) and the nuttery of "identity movement Greens" (and don't forget censorship on the GP Facebook group before it was closed) and I am an ex-Green. And kind of hoping for it to implode more.

Back to Stein, though.

First, it's sad that she, Baraka and others were so hoping on Cornell West before he spit the bit (and then went on to spit the rest of his political future). Second, it's sadder yet that she is running again as a three-time retread, also referenced in the top post. The Libertarians have never run a three-time candidate. That is the repository of truly minor parties, or the Socialists, with Eugene Debs first, then Norman Thomas.

Second, back to Stein 2016. Beyond the "lesser evilism" of the recount, the claim the election was hacked was high-grade bullshit. And more bullshit. And, some eyebrow raising over legal fees, recount contributor lists and more. Related? I hope Brains has gotten more skeptical about Stein — more cynical, like me, would be OK, too — compared to where he was in 2016, specifically, more skeptical or cynical than he was then about her investments. (Brains works for a financial advisor/planner, and knows that "ethical mutual funds" exist, and that they did way back in the time of 2000 hypocrite Ralph Nader.)

I've already indicated that, via write-in, presuming she has her 40 electors, the Party of Socialism and Liberation's Claudia de la Cruz will be my choice. Hard pass on both Stein and SPUSA's Bill Stodden, should he get his 40 electors for write-in status.

Beyond that, here at the Texas state level, its craptacularness on two of the three 2022 candidates is indication it's past its best buy date here. I said so at the time. Stein will not get 2 percent of the Texas vote. We'll see what happens with the Texas Supreme Court, Railroad Commission and Court of Criminal Appeals. 

So far? Eddie Espinoza is a better (potential) RRC candidate than Hunter Crow 2 years ago, but that's a HUGELY low bar. And, geez, the Texas GP's website? When you click on candidates, it goes to a national list. There's so far nothing about other potential Texas candidates on there or the Texas GP's Facebook page.

Speaking of? I'm dropping a few other Green names who are in Jill Stein's campaign fundraising email mentions.

Matthew Hoh, 2022 U.S. Senate candidate in North Carolina. (That's the only big name within the GP as of the time of this, but I'll add more as they come.)

All of you are complicit in Jill Stein's hypocrisy. And, it's not just Gaza, although that's the biggie.

Today is Earth Day. Stein's hands are oily with eXXXon and other oil stocks in her personally chosen mutual funds. One of them is Shell; maybe Charles Kuffner of Off the Kuff could stop being a BlueAnon and vote Stein instead.

Presidential politics, April 19 — mouthy Jesse Ventura, Luciferian RFK Jr, Watermelon Oreos

I had already written this up yesterday, but we now have a new top story!

Jesse "the Body" Ventura (because his stanners hate that) now says he can beat Biden and Trump. So? Get No Labels or whomever to nominate you.

As of right now, this is just Jesse running his fucking mouth just like in 2020. He wanted the Green Party nomination back then, but didn't want to campaign for it — like Cornel West this year. He wanted it handed to him on a platter. More bluntly, as I said then? He wanted his ass kissed. But, he avoided directly saying that, showing that he's a better retail politician than West. (That's a low bar to hurdle; my left butt cheek is a better retail politician than West.) When that didn't happen, to be blunt again? He became chickenshit.

Anyway, how that all played out?

Some of Jesse's stanners used Dario Hunter as a stalking horse. (You did.) He was, I first thought, too dumb to notice that, but per link below, he eventually admitted this was deliberate. But, the effort failed anyway. Sorry, William Pounds, Primo Nutbar especially, and other pseudoleftists, conspiracy theorists, etc. It's all true. The fun after that was when, after going all hasbara in the campaign (ye gads, imagine him this year) Hunter played the race card.

==

RFK Jr. NOT not running as a Libertarian. He said he thought he would get on all 50 states' ballots on his own line, either by his individual name or a carve-out/SPAC third party created for that purpose. A couple of thoughts following.

First, I figured all along it would be too hard a fit to go Libertarian. He'd have to junk his environmental stances, which would sink his standing with one portion of his backers.

Second, he and his advisors are clearly looking for every loophole or angle in various states' ballot access laws, and finding them. Will state legislatures, under duopoly prodding, close more of these in the next year or so?

Third, it seems clearer than ever that the LP was in part just a stalking horse for Bob Jr. LP Chair Angela McArdle, running a party that's going broke and facing internal dissents, said she would not comment for "at least a few days."

I guess, per that link, that Bob Jr. is now McArdle's Luciferian master.

==

I'm not sure what the Muslim word for "Oreo" might be. Maybe, per the watermelon symbol for Palestinians, we could adopt the US frontier West's phrase of "all hat, no cattle," to "all rind, no red." Anyway, "on the US street" but politically engaged Muslim-Americans are seeing plenty of "watermelon Oreos" among leadership of groups claiming to represent the Muslim-American populace, but really, representing the Genocide Joe Biden re-election campaign. Mondoweiss has details.

==

Remember when #WallbuilderJoe, just a few weeks ago, said that Congress had to give him the authority to tighten up the border with Mexico? Guess that was another lie. Per Axios, he told Univision that he's going to do a Trump-style executive order. He's already kept Trump's Section 42 in place by other means, with the buggy app to apply for asylum. Now this.

==

Trump has officially opposed supporting a national ban on abortion. How many of the right-to-life wingers will stay home in their disappointment? That said, this is THE WORST granting of on-background commenting ever, with the weaselshits at Axios talking about a number of Rethuglicans in Congress "breathing a sigh of relief" over this, but letting them comment on background, namelessly.

==

Cornel West being Cornel West again. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got national news hype of some sort out of his vice-presidential announcement, including through the use of various leaks before it became official. West just "drops it out there" in an interview with Tavis Smiley, when he announced Melina Abdullah as his choice. (There was a press release, but it came out AFTER the interview, and I suspect was written on the fly afterward.)

==

Warmonger Joe has decided NOT to restock the Strategic Petroleum Reserve after all. Reading between the lines? That means Team Biden expects oil prices to go up further, which means inflation will go up.

Gee, can you guys think of a country with LOTS of oil? Let me help you out. Its name starts with an "R."

==

Mormons, and especially Mormon women, showing less hypocrisy than Protestants of the Religious Right, are tilting Biden. Won't matter in Utah and Idaho. Will matter in Nevada and Aridzona. And, downballot, not just in presidential races. Many of these people say they feel abandoned by the GOP in general.

OTOH, Biden's continuing to lose ground among younger non-white voters.

Texas Progressives talk Stickland, Goeb, more

Updating my old name for him, Former Fetus Future Fascist Forever Fuckwad Jonathan Stickland, in conjunction with Matt Rinaldi is venturing into new fields of wingnuttery squared.

Lite Guv Danny Goeb says fighting antisemitism is part of his call to the Texas Senate in 2025. This is a lie in three ways. First, most Christian Zionists, like Tex-ass' own John Hagee, are antisemitic in their own way. Second, it of course, as is usually with those people, conflates anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Third, lemme know when, within the Tex-ass Rethuglican Party and auxiliaries, Goeb does more about Stickland and Rinaldi.

If Patrick really wants to investigate school districts for anything, ask why more high schools aren't following Texas law and registering 18-year-olds to vote. Could it be connected to how few people vote in Tex-ass Rethuglican primaries and their continued winning of statewide races? While you're at it, investigate Jane Nelson as Secretary of State for not enforcing compliance.

After Chief Justice John Roberts, under color of the Judicial Conference, introduced policy changes to stop judge-shopping for people like Matthew Kacsmaryk, both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have introduced separate bills to codify that. Morphine Mitch claims Judicial Conference policy is not legislation. Sadly, in the sense that John Marshall Roberts can't enforce it, and Northern District of Texas chief judge David Godbey has already said he won't follow it, he's sort of right. OTOH, Congress created the Judicial Conference, and delegated things like case assignment authority to it. It could also impeach David Godbey, but won't. Oh, this is why I don't "revere" the Constitution. Morphine Mitch's bill is a more narrowly written version of Schumer's, and it's clear why.

SocraticGadfly, in an extended review of Stephen Vladeck's book, talks about the problems with the Supreme Court's shadow docket.

Hellz yes on fighting TPWD's plan to give Elmo Musk part of Boca Chica State Park.

Elmo Musk is now getting punked by phishers. 

Here's the anti-Palestinian, pro-Zionist facts about World Central Kitchen — from a former employee.

The Current highlights allegations of unsafe working conditions at Elon Musk's Boring Company made by its employees. 

H-E-B is selling over-the-counter birth control pills.

John Whitmire sux.

Dallas Express owner Monty Bennett faces a shareholder lawsuit. Sidebar: Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson hired a staffer from there as a communications consultant. Sidebar 2: Rinaldi and Candy Evans of "Candy's Dirt" (which does have some real dirt) are on the Express' board. Sidebar 3: The lawsuit shows just how unprofitable much "pink slime" journalism is.

Off the Kuff has interviews with two of the candidates for the HCAD Board, Pelumi Adeleke and Austin Pooley.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said that police union support of far-right extremists is a threat to public safety.

Texas Highways tells the story of El Paso's failed theme park Magic Landing.

The TSTA Blog doesn't think much of Mike Morath's comic stylings.  

Evil MoPac evaluates the Austin of 2024 as a place to live. (Contra the piece, traffic is probably worse than being sold, prices are worse than being sold, and a lot of the residents are Californicators.)

 Ken Hoffman knows what to do with clickbait listicles.

Basic income showdown in Houston

Harris County Attorney Christian Menafee is ready to take on Kenny Boy Paxton in a legal battle over the county's guaranteed income. (Kenny Boy should just leave well enough alone; if Harris Uplift is like most such, it will die on its own. And, Andrew Yang is at least halfway right in saying this is "not socialism." Sadly, the biggest fanbois of basic income want to use it in a libertarian way to gut things like unemployment insurance, SSDI, etc.)

Update, April 23: The Texas Supreme Court has granted a stay to Kenny Boy on his writ of mandamus. 

Just look at basic income guru (and that's used with ALL connotative as well as denotative meanings of "guru") Scott Santens:

• Called Trump "the basic income Moses," per a piece where Scott is himself associated with the World Economic Forum, as in Davos, while getting more alarmist about AI then than Lanier is today;
• Wants to junk entitlements, including even trimming Social Security — more here;
  
• Is a crypto-bro;
• Denies that there are libertarian and non-libertarian versions of BI that don't square with each other;
• And on all of this, can't do math on how to pay for his ideas.

As for "die on its own"? Most BI pilot projects, at the municipal, county, or, IIRC provincial level in Canada in the past, have been terminated by later local governments, as in, terminated before the drop-down date on them set by the original, approving governments. Harris Uplift is also a pilot. The $500 a month is not bad. The 2,000 households out of what could easily be 100,000 in Harris County, if not 200,000, is a drop in the bucket. (Reflecting me, the Trib's story on the state Supreme Court notes that Austin is looking at resurrecting a pilot program that it discontinued.) Alaska's Permanent Fund will be as oil production there continues to decline, since that's what funds it. (The 2023 payout, full year, was just $1,312, which is really a drop in the bucket on Alaska cost of living. That's $110 a month, or about $70 a month, if that, in Houston dollars.)

Also, in addition to the above, BI is not a magic wand. And, if you don't believe in Modern Monetary Theory (I don't, and "believe" is the right word, as I a few years ago said it's "Maoism or New Ageism") how do you pay for anything beyond a pilot?

Finally, this IS income. If Kenny Boy loses his lawsuit, while Texas doesn't have a state income tax, Uncle Sam does. Let us hope that County Judge Lina Hidalgo informs people of that.

World news roundup: Irian Jaya, Syria, Canada

Irian Jaya, or West Papua, per Counterpunch, continues to descend further in its own, Tolstoyean-specific, misery and hell. For the unfamiliar, the western half of the island of the New Guinea was, during Dutch colonial rule, administered separately from the Dutch East Indies. And, it held on to it after Indonesian independence in 1949, leading to the West New Guinea dispute in the early 1960s. Sukarno turned up the heat on the Dutch, pushed the US, and got Soviet weapons for a possible invasion. The Dutch turned the territory over to the UN. It almost immediately handed it to Indonesia, with Sukarno promising some degree of autonomy. Six years later, under Suharto, a rigged plebiscite fully annexed it to Indonesia.

Also per Counterpunch, with or without Irian Jaya/West Papua, but very much with it, it's a product of the Cold War. JFK leaned on the Dutch precisely because Sukarno cozied up to the USSR. In 1975, Ford ignored Indonesia's overrunning East Timor, abandoned to its fate by Portugal after the Salazar dictatorship was overthrown in Lisbon, because of fears/claims/worries East Timor would go Commie.

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Another good piece from Counterpunch here is about the "forgotten Palestinians." These are the ones who are refugees in Syria, and have become entangled in Syrian civil war issues of the past decade-plus. Richard Falk notes the Assad government viewed them suspiciously after the start of the civil war, for a variety of reasons. Falk adds that the anti-anti-Assad angle of the "hard left," as he calls it, and if we're talking people like Aaron Maté, pseudoleftists is more what I call them, increases the problem.

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Pretty Boy Trudeau is in serious trouble in the Great White North. As things stand now, he and his Liberals are going to get barbecued in the next Canadian federal election; fortunately, it's 18 months away. The Walrus has a longform, including longform fact-checking, about Trudeau's past promises vs performance and many other things, with segments from a longform interview sliced in between.

Near the end of the piece, Canadian housing prices (which are a LOT worse than most US big cities in Canada's main metro areas) get discussion. If Pretty Boy can't "get" this issue, he's sunk. 

After that, the Walrus piece notes that Trudeau will almost certainly go negative and heavily so to try to win.

Of further note, per Wiki? Almost all the Commons incumbents who are not running again are Liberals.

Two questions on my mind are:

A. Can the LDP get enough of their shit together to pass the Liberals, and, somewhat related

B. Could we see a coalition if the two block the Conservatives from a majority, but finish second and third, in whichever order?  

I assume if that happens, even if the LDP remains in No. 3, that the price of coalition is the Liberals turf Trudeau as party leader.

Julian Assange, the US government and "weasel words"

Per The Guardian's report on the assurances the US government has offered Julian Assange, they could be, in actuality, "weasel words," per his wife Stella. That is, they could be promises broken after he is extradited.

But, I'm going to unpack them at face value. Here we go:

On Tuesday, details emerged of the assurances given by the US, which stated that he “will not be prejudiced by reason of his nationality with respect to which defences he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing”. 

It referred specifically to him having “the ability to raise and seek to rely upon” the first amendment but also said that its applicability “is exclusively within the purview of the US courts”. The assurances also state: “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange.”

First, no death penalty is good. That said, Assange, who probably hates on Joe Biden about as much as Bill and Hillary Clinton, should find someone besides Russia's SVR, or Internet Research Agency, to do some pro-Biden fake email leaks. Because, despite Assange's gullibility in 2016, Donald Trump views a relationship with him as purely transactional, and Donald Trump is clearly pro-federal death penalty.

Second, I believe the government's stance on the First Amendment is correct. That's because I don't believe Assange is a journalist. I didn't even before the 2016 leaks. I especially didn't after he goosed the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.

As for her claim that the prosecution says Assange has no First Amendment rights because he's not a US citizen? He generally will have (dependent on exact judicial ruling) access to other clauses of the First Amendment. They also do NOT offer blanket protections against behavior that would be criminal without invoking the First Amendent, and let us remember that Assange would be facing criminal not civil trial. Let us also remember that neither the UK nor Assange's native Australia have anything that close to the First Amendment. And, the Russia to which Assange lured Edward Snowden (he did and shut up) has no such protection at all. And, at Counterpunch on this issue, Binoy Kampmark does some overreading.

Were I the philosopher-president of the USofA, any plea deal with Assange would require him to admit responsibility for his role in the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Period and end of story. Should he make a non-weasel words confession, and should he, especially per what I said about Snowden above, admit to any direct contacts with the SVR, the FSB et al, I would give Assange the equivalent of deferred adjudication — for 10 years, to keep a Sword of Damocles over his head. That would satisfy Aussie calls for non-prosecution, satisfy the spirit of "he's suffered enough," but also satisfy the spirit of what he's actually done. Speaking of the first clause in the previous sentence, Australia is a member of the "Five Eyes," but I suspect US security agencies have shared little information with it.

Reality crushes nostalgia; H-E-B ain't all that

Half a dozen years ago and more, I lived in a small town near Waco. H-E-B and Wally were the two groceries, and that Wally was small enough it had no frozen section and only a small refrigerated section.

In Waco, there were a couple of Albertson's but it was pretty much H-E-B territory.

Several years before that, I lived in a small town near College Station. It had H-E-B and maybe a grocery Wally, though I don't remember. Bryan-College Station had one Kroger that I know of, and am not sure what else besides H-E-B.

Well, having back then gone to Central Markets in the Metromess after they first opened, I had fond memories of H-E-B. And, with the company now in the Metromess with regular H-E-B stores, not just Central Market, I decided to both indulge nostalgia and do some actual shopping in Frisco.

Well, I'm also a more discerning grocery shopper than I was several years ago, including buying even more healthier food today, plus, I have a Winco in Denton as well as multiple Krogers. There's also Aldi, which may have been in Waco several years ago but was NOT in College Station several years before that.

And, per the header?  

H-E-B ain't it, to put it bluntly.

I had a pen in my back pocket and the receipt side paper from a check that I had been written for some freelance work to serve as note paper, and I took notes. (Let us note that I didn't see the Frisco store branded as an H-E-B+, but it was still plenty good, and the Kroger I hit most often in Denton, while decent to good, isn't at its highest level, either.)

Let's dive in.

In their house brand, thin spaghetti is the only whole wheat pasta H-E-B has. Kroger has penne, macaroni and rigatoni, and maybe lasagna. I think Winco has the first four.

H-E-B has no house brand of Triscuits. It also doesn't carry the Wasa Swedish crispbreads.

The wide "deli-style" bread? None of it had more than 3 grams of fiber. I can get 4-gram at Kroger, Winco and Aldi all three. Plus, sodium was 200 milligrams a slice; it's less at all three.

Deli cheese selection? Probably moderately better than my normal Kroger, modestly better than the south loop Kroger in Denton, but not hugely better. And, higher priced. 

Only a limited selection of Central Market Italian sodas, and only in the 750ml bottles, not individual cans. (They did have their premium flavored other specialty drinks, which are halfway between Italian sodas and sparkling water.)

Oh, and prices? 

Their bread is higher than Kroger's or Aldi's or Winco's. Whole wheat pasta was a draw. Brown rice was higher. "Folgers in a can" and house brand equivalents were higher. Cokes were higher.

On bulk foods? Their nutritional yeast is $2 a pound higher than Winco. I don't recall seeing bulk oatmeal, and am sure they don't have bulk steel-cut, let alone English porridge style oatmeal. Their bulk coffee does have a couple more varieties on roasts than Winco, while being at a higher price — but less than Central Market.

Premium sodas? Both higher priced and shorter selection, with the exception of me not recalling seeing Maine Root's blueberry soda elsewhere.

In addition, when I asked if they still used their points card, which isn't exactly like Kroger's shopper card? Call that "wasn't" instead of "isn't," because they don't. And, that too means less savings, speaking of prices. That includes that Kroger's shopper card offers fuel points. If I can, with one big fill-up a month, save 50-60 cents a gallon, that's another $12-$15 of savings.

Flip side is that shoppers cards do track your buying. OTOH, your credit or debit card info also tracks your buying, and so do H-E-B's in-store coupons. Sidebar to that? H-E-B seems to lean on "combo buys" (as in, buy these three items, save $5 or whatever) at least as much as Kroger. Maybe more.

Nostalgia has been cured, and even if H-E-B were to build in Denton itself, I wouldn't make it a regular part of my grocery shopping.

Nostalgia has been rationally examined and kicked to the curb. And, that old points card has been thrown in the trash.

You folks in Helltown, Austin, San Antone, etc., especially if you're H-E-B cultists applauding them moving north of I-20? (And, yes, it's one of Texas' three major retail cults, along with What? A Burger? and Fuck You the Beaver, which I haven't yet blogged about in detail. [Blue Bell, after its second listeria escapade, I think lost some of its cultiness even among the Tex-ass faithful.]) You should instead be begging for Winco to come SOUTH of I-20 to you.

NAIA rules on transsexual athletes

I'm not sure that the NAIA's ban on post-hormone supplementation transsexual (transgender?) athletes is totally wrong, to put it mildly. I am sure that sex and gender aren't the same thing, and that the AP doesn't know the difference. And, yes, I also know that many NAIA schools are not only private but religious. I also still know the difference between sex and gender. I ALSO also know that both transsexuals and transgendered have certain general human rights and certain legal rights in particular. I ALSO ALSO know that, stereotyped scenarios aside, those rights aren't necessarily the same.

And, per all of the above, that's why the header says "transsexual." I know that among people biologically born women, and those biologically born men, testosterone levels can show major variation. I ALSO know that in many sports, there's rules against steroids and roiding.

That might be the easier answer for the NAIA and would circumvent Title IX. Just set rules against testosterone supplementation, period. Now, it would surely be harder to test than for steroids, given what I said above. Impossible? No.

Is it really "just politics" for Biden to cut blank checks to Bibi?

So says Phil Weiss, founder of Mondoweiss.

I don't totally agree. 

I do agree that all duopoly party US presidents feel some degree of beholden-ness to the Israel lobby. Weiss has the receipts, like Biden's receipts with Saim Haban.

But, I don't think it's entirely that.

One can have an emotional attachment like this as well as a political need.

Obama staffers called out Genocide Joe early this year for having too much of an attachment. That piece notes that Biden called himself a Zionist after Oct. 7. I don't recall other presidents of either major party doing that at the time of an Israel-Palestine fracas. This piece notes that when Biden was Dear Leader's Veep, they disagreed about whether or not to "hug" Israel. It's true that disagreement on that could be primarily if not purely political, whether domestically, in foreign policy, or both. But, if not purely political, it could still have an emotional sidebar.

What I think is partially at play, speaking of emotions, is a sidebar on Biden's Irish Alzheimer's. He is determined to show Obama himself, and certainly Obama staffers, that he is right.

Is Trump a fascist? I still say no

Contra Robert Paxton, who Corey Robin says wrote "the book" on fascism, I reject the idea, espoused by Paxton three years ago, that Jan. 6, 2021 made Trump a fascist.

It's not whether the Capitol insurrection succeeded or not. It's Trump's degree of involvement or not. 

The Beer Hall Putsch failed, but Hitler was actively pushing it. Trump posted a vague message or two on Twitter, did nothing about getting the National Guard involved later, but also did NOT get personally involved with the insurrection (wrong, Blue Anon) and did not block the National Guard from eventually being called up.

Paxton might point to what he's written on the 1934 French coup. True that no leaders of far right parties seemed involved. But, it does seem that people with political standing, not just the 1934 French version of the Proud Boys, WERE active. Paxton himself notes of that:

On that evening thousands of French veterans of World War I, bitter at rumors of corruption in a parliament already discredited by its inefficacy against the Great Depression, attempted to invade the French parliament chamber, just as the deputies were voting yet another shaky government into power. The veterans had been summoned by right-wing organizations. They made no secret of their wish to replace what they saw as a weak parliamentary government with a fascist dictatorship on the model of Hitler or Mussolini.

Trump wasn't looking to replace Joe Biden with Viktor Orban. He was looking to replace himself with more of himself. And, other than Trump himself, while you had many wingnuts in Congress contesting various states' electoral votes, you did not have any Republican leaders outside the Capitol assisting the insurrection as it happened, nor joining Trump in advance to call for something like this.

The reality is that I think Corey Robin's own analysis is still true, as I wrote about a few years ago. Trump was, and is, a "disjunctive president." He's not a fascist. That said, we're still stuck in the Sixth Party System, and as I told Robin on Twitter, I think we're going to remain stuck there and it's a sign the United States is, while not a "failed state," is a "failing state." Also, as I noted at that link, in a comment to David Bruce Collins, it was "The Resistance," aka #BlueAnon, who first called Trump a fascist. It takes two to tango, or tangle, in a dysfuctional (and disjunctive?) political system.

While I'm here on Paxton, I think part of his thesis on Vichy France is wrong. I do think Vichy actively shaped its future, and I think both in France and beyond, Paxton decisively reset the historical narrative. I do NOT think there's a direct line, or even THAT close to one, between Vichy and the Gaullists. In addition, Wiki's piece on the 1934 putsch or whatever we call it, provides broader perspective, including that not all the right-wing groups wanted to replace parliamentary government in general. For that matter, I'm not sure that Paxton is totally right on claiming a bright line between the 1934 putsch and Vichy.

No, Jim Edmonds didn't roid, Reddit fucktard

On my blog post two days ago about how Juan Soto is NOT NOT NOT a "generational talent" wirth $500 million, the fucktards came out hot and heavy on Reddit r/MLB, where I posted this. People talking about the short right field porch at Yankee while ignoring OPS+, WAR, etc. are park-neutralized. People claiming fielding for a corner OF is overrated. People ignoring just how bad he is in the field. People claiming that, at just at age 25, they can project out his post-30 aging curve.

And, when I pointed out Jim Edmonds as a comp on some issues, on the issue of fielding and other things, one fucktard insinuated Edmonds was roiding.

Said chud posted an old piece from r/baseball that he claimed was support, as shown at left. It doesn't. Yes, the cutoff is 4 WAR, not 7, which Edmonds had.

That was after me posting a LONG list of people who were above 10 WAR when they got older, off this B-Ref page with every WAR value, in order, by player, age and season. I went with age-30, instead of 34, because that's where he originally started from, a blanket statement that everybody declines after 30. No they don't. Beyond that? Small sample size on his part.

I earlier than this mentioned that Dwight Evans had fully half his WAR from age 30 on. Chud didn't like that either.

Chud got butthurt in addition because I included pitchers, even tho his chart backs me up!

Beyond that, I'd never before heard insinuations about Edmonds roiding, so he's full of shit right there. He and others have been blocked and I am posting this there.

Let's go back to that B-Ref all time piece on WAR.

We will of course exclude Bonds and Clemens. A-Rod, Sosa, Jason Giambi, also excluded.

But, we will go back more than a decade. And, we'll look for EIGHT not seven or more WAR by decade, because the B-Ref list is top 500 and ties, and cuts off above 8 WAR. I'll still start at age 30, because that was the chud's cutoff line.

We'll list them by decade, in order of WAR, etc., starting with the 1980s.

1980s: 10.1. Steve Carlton, 35, 1980; Mike Schmidt, 8.9, 30, 1980; Lonnie Smith (really) 8.8, 33, 1989 (waiting for him to be accused of roiding); Rickey Henderson, 8.7, 30, 1989; Wade Boggs, 8.4, 31, 1989;

1990s: Cal Ripken, 11.5, 1991, 30; Rickey Henderson, 9.9, 31, 1990; Larry Walker, 9.8, 30, 1997; Craig Biggio, 9.4, 31, 1997; Kevin Brown, 9.1, 33, 1998; Randy Johnson, 8.6, 31, 1995; Randy Johnson, 8.6, 35, 1999; Mark Langston, 8.5, 32, 1993;

2000s: Randy Johnson, 10.5, 38, 2002 (OOPS! 3 Randy Johnsons of 8 WAR or above, age 30 or older, and two of them age 35 or older); and make that FOUR; Randy Johnson, 9.5, 37, 2001; Ichiro Suzuki, 9.2, 30, 2004 (maybe Johnson got roids from Seattle-days A-Roid, then that permeated the clubhouse?); Bret Boone, 8.8, 32, 2001; Curt Schilling, 8.5, both ages 34 and 35, 2001 and 2002 (he obviously got them from Randy, when both were with the D-backs)

2010s: Jacob deGrom, 9.9, 30, 2018; Zack Greinke, 9.5, 31, 2015; Cliff Lee, 9.0, 32, 2011; Max Scherzer, 8.7, 33, 2018; Roy Halliday, 8.6, 34, 2011;

2020s: Aaron Judge, 10.5, 30, 2022.

OK, let's sum it up.

From 1980s on, modern baseball, after first two rounds of expansion and more?

TWENTY-FOUR players at EIGHT not SEVEN WAR or more, age 30 or more. That was the chud's cutoff!

Even if we go age 34? Seven seasons EIGHT WAR or above.

Sidebar? As posted there?

All the TEN WAR seasons, post-30, age 31 or later, non-roiders:

Honus Wagner, 11.5, age 34. Bob Gibson, 11.5, age 33. Willie Mays, 11.0, age 33. Gaylord Perry, 11.0, age 33. (The ball was enhanced, he was not.) Lefty Grove, 10.6, age 36. Rogers Hornsby, 10.6, age 33. Babe Ruth, 10.5, both age 35 and 36. Dazzy Vance, 10.3, ages 33 and 37. Babe Ruth, 10.2, age 33. Steve Carlton, 10.1, age 35. Bob Gibson, 10.1, age 34. Carl Hubbell, 10.1, age 33. Cy Young, 10.1, age 35. Lefty Grove and Nap Lajoie, 10.0 age 31. 

Chud was butt-hurt by facts.

And, moderators got butt-hurt by me refusing to back down, and deleted it.

Palestinian Jews and Christians; how correlation is not causation, Paula Fredriksen

Paula Fredriksen is right that Jesus was NOT a Palestinian Jew. Palestine as a Roman province did not exist until after the Second Jewish Revolt. (That said, contra some Zionists, Greek has a "Ph as F" sound so don't go there with your pseudo-semantics.)

She is right (numbers don't lie) about the decline in Christian percentages of modern Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.

She is wrong, though, when she implies that the Palestinian decline in the West Bank is due to the Palestinian Authority the same way in which the decline in Gaza is due to Hamas:

Bethlehem has been administered by the Palestinian Authority since 1995. Once a significant majority there, the Christian population plunged from 86 percent in 1950 to less than 12 percent in 2016. 

As for the Gaza Strip, it is even less hospitable to Christians. As the New Yorker reported in January, a count by the Catholic Church in Gaza, “once home to a thriving Christian community,” found just 1,017 Christians, amid a population of more than 2 million. After seizing control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas ended the designation of Christmas as a public holiday and discouraged its celebration. The dwindling population of Gazan Christians has been harassed, intimidated, even murdered. Were Jesus to show up in modern-day Gaza, he would find an extremely hostile environment.

In fact, the National Catholic Register piece to which she links directly refutes her attempt at bright-line causation in the West Bank:

Many people explain that the declining Christian population in Palestine is due to the overall difficulties of living in Palestine, not because of overt discrimination towards Christians. "Even Muslims are leaving; of course, it will not be as evident to see how many Muslims are leaving compared to the Christians, because the Christians are really a minority," said Sr. Lucia Corradin, a Elizabethan sister from Italy who works at the Caritas Baby Hospital. 

In Israel, where Arab Christians have comparatively more opportunities than their Palestinian counterparts, the Christian population has stayed stable. The Christian population grew by about 5,000 in the past 20 years. Today Christians in Israel number 164,700, about 2 percent of the population, a similar ratio to past decades. ... 

Nabil Giacaman, a Catholic shop owner of the "Christmas House" store on Manger Square, said media emphasis on the shrinking Christian population was part of an effort to create an internal divide in Palestinian society. "It's not about Christians and Muslims, it's not that I'm facing these issues only because I'm a Christian," said Giacaman. "As Muslims suffer, Christians also suffer. At the end, we are all Palestinian, we get the same permits and the same treatment at the checkpoints."

As I see it, per that second paragraph, it's like how the government of Israel gives special consideration to the Druze. Divida et impera, Fredriksen.

Oh, and by the way, the column doesn't mention that Fredriksen converted to Judaism and has taught at Hebrew University. Nor that she, at least until recently, split her living time between Boston and Jerusalem. At least it's West Jerusalem.

That said, as an ex-Christian Jew speaking less than fully skeptically about the Resurrection story, or trying to have her cake and eat it too on Augustine, or appearing to give higher credibility to John's historicity than warranted (given it's likely the latest of the four canonicals is problem one) her intellectual chops aren't all that. I got the above hits while Googling to see if she's Zionist. No, really. With her name and "Zionist" both in search quotes on DuckDuckGo, no hits. With "Zionism" instead, one hit, not much help; it's in the first paragraph of a book review by her.

I await her commenting on the Yahweh-ordered holocaust against Amalek and with more honesty than the lack thereof from Michael Hudson.

Right-wing rural resentment is NOT "rage" — but liberal suckerdom still is

So says a collegiate researcher from a rural site — Colby College in Maine. And, Nicholas Jacobs name-checks people like Amanda Marcotte for misusing his data.

Marcotte is herself a piece of work, a Hillbot who's as deplorable in some ways as any of the people Hillary Clinton called deplorables, but I digress.

Jacobs says that what the likes of her and other librul pundits, and the DNC equivalent of Nat-Sec Nutsacks, get wrong is thinking in terms of policies, not politics.

I think that's true to a degree. That said, I've heard this number played before. I'll get to that at the end of this piece, after giving Jacobs a fair and thorough shake about the observations in his article, which are plentiful.

Let's get started.

Jacobs then offers a few observations:

1. Resentment is in play, but that's not rage and is more rational
2. Racism does exist but is not a primary driver of the resentment
3. This is a politics of place
4. There's no one single reason driving it.

All good backgrounding.

Here, about one-third in, may be the nutgraf:

So, the problem Democrats haven’t been able to solve isn’t policy; it’s politics. And Democrats who give in to the simplistic rage thesis are essentially letting themselves off the hook on the politics, suggesting that rural Americans are irrational and beyond any effort to engage them.

Big old BOOM there. Followed by this one.

So, the problem Democrats haven’t been able to solve isn’t policy; it’s politics. And Democrats who give in to the simplistic rage thesis are essentially letting themselves off the hook on the politics, suggesting that rural Americans are irrational and beyond any effort to engage them. That would be a massive mistake, one that does truly threaten democracy. Democrats have an opportunity to do better in rural America. We need them to do better

And, that sets aside the hypocrisy of third-party-hating Democrats clutching their pearls over "democracy."

Personal observation? There's plenty of wingnuttery where I live, but people are, by and large, secure enough in their place that I have yet to see a house as Trumpiana-festooned as the one in one picture in the story.

Next, Jacobs calls out the authors of White Rural Rage for detailed wrongs. First is the fallacy of composition, and when you've engaged, in depth, in a classical informal logic fallacy, you have a problem, that I know.

As far as white Christian nationalism and their claims? Tim Dunn's Midland isn't rural, I can tell you that off the top of my head. Maybe the book's authors think all of "flyover country" is automatically rural?

Finally, as far as trying to get Dems to address politics, not policies, Jacobs pivots back to the issue of it being resentment, not rage. He notes that rural voters may often vote against their self-interest, but cites their politics of place, plus saying a sense of agency is involved. This:

Instead of a politics that seeks to understand and represent these contradictions, the left wants to simplify ruralness into something it’s not.

Is another good pick-up.

COVID exemplies this. California has huge metropolitan areas, but also, depending on exactly how rural is defined, plenty of ruraldom, too. Setting aside the hypocrisy of churches that were not in rural area on COVID attendance, I think rural areas wanted some flexibility on COVID policies.

That said, I do think Jacobs hits a foul ball fairly near the end, and it's not about Democrats but about Republicans. And, about those rural voters

This:

A fter portraying white rural America as an obstacle to democracy (and the Democratic Party), Schaller and Waldman call for a “ real rural movement” to “use the power they have, and start demanding something more concrete.” 

What they miss is that a real rural movement is already here. It is the rural movement towards the Republican Party that has been building since the 1980s.

Is a lazy follow-up to what Nicholas had said up to this point. 

First, even if the book's authors use sketchy poll data, Nicholas admits they're not 100 percent wrong on seeing how resentment plays out.

Second, and related, yes, resentment itself may be rational, but how it plays out is not always so.

Third, like the old Oldsmobile commercial, "This is not your mother's GOP." And, in specifics surrounding Trumpianism, the play-out of the resentment DOES seem more irrational, as well as more visible. It's a defiant middle finger, or a desire to "own the libs," that IMO might continue even if Democrats did a better job of uniting policies and politics to the degree possible.

Third, part two, is that national and statewide level Republican leaders don't really have much more in the way of answers than Democrats do, but are perfectly content to stoke the politics of resentment.

Fourth, it ignores the possibility that a fair amount of ruraldom knows what Dems say about being "takers" and don't care.

He does correct himself after that, trying to envision a politics that does address rural resentment. More bullet points:

1. Note the rural-urban geographic divide
2. Stop making it about racism, including both noting that racism still exists in urban areas and noting that rural nonwhites hold race-based tropes, too
3. Note that these rural nonwhites agree with rural whites on the geographic divide and the sense of place.

All good points. And not just for the coasts. Many urban Texas Dems could stand to accept this. 

At the same time, this appears to have a tinge of the "listening tour" to it, which Hillary Clinton touted but never did and Arlie Russell Hochschild did, but it was a one-way street. See my review below for more. That said, in the linked blog post, I mention Paul Waldman (whose book Jacobs is critiquing and even attacking) calling this a mug's game. I at least partially agree.

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those books where I'd like to have a two-part, split review.

I'd give Hochschild 5 stars for the listening side and 3 stars for the analytical side.

Since I can't, it's 4 stars, and let's discuss what she misses, or takes a pass on.

First, although she hints at the cognitive dissonance of the people she interviewed, she never spells it out. In fact, she never even uses the phrase. The closest she comes to that is using Gen. Russell Honore as a kind of a foil on environmental issues.

And, no, this is not a political science book. Nonetheless, sociology, like other social/soft sciences, can indeed engage in analysis and interpretation.

Second is the hypocrisy issue. Not so much toward the government when it's big biz doing the polluting, and the feds at least are trying to address it, even when Jindal's totally cutting state-level enforcement in Louisiana.

But, the hypocrisy of the highly religious voting to re-elect David Vitter to the Senate, when his sexual promiscuity was splashed all over non-Faux type news and surely got at least a few mentions there.

I mean, Hochschild just whiffs here. Unlike environmental issues, she doesn't even try to raise this issue in a roundabout way. And, Vitter's just a sample; just as she knows the pollution issue and red states, she knows the higher divorce rates, and related sexuality issues, along with high out-of-marriage birth rates for southern whites as well as blacks.

For those living in coastal enclaves, and wanting a sympathetic insight, perhaps the book is worth more.

But, for we liberals, let alone outright lefties, in these red states? The book tells me as much about Hochschild, in a sense, as it does her subjects. That's the only reason I didn't 3-star it overall. Basically, she seems of the mindset that liberals should do these listening tours whether conservatives do or not and that will somehow change their minds. I don't know exactly how the political breakthrough hurdles need to be cleared, but just a listening tour isn't one.

Beyond that, to tout this beyond sociology and as having a light for political science is wrong. That's mainly because there's an asymmetry at work.

Basically, no conservative sociologist would do what she did. We know, because Charles Murray wrote The Bell Curve instead.

View all my reviews

First, note that Hochschild speaks about rage. That's anger, not resentment. To turn back to Jacobs, a subset of the resentful may have rage.

Second, this is Overton window territory for the professional exploiters of the politics of resentment. To trump Jacobs? That goes back to Tricky Dick.  

Of course, when you're Jacobs, and your book publishing CV includes "What Happened to the Vital Center," the game is up.  His more recent book, "The Rural Voter," from which I expect his essay is taken? Hard to say. No 4-star reviews, just ratings. The two 3-star reviews? One says it's too data-dense, the other, by a deep-fried capital-L Libertarian, says it's not footnoted enough and that it's elitist. Looking at his reviews, dude comes off as semi-nutter WITHIN Libertarian Party / libertarianism.

On the third hand, it's easy to stereotype, or to move from group generalization to individual stereotype. I have a neighbor in my apartment complex who's a trucker, and delivers a dedicated product — fracking sand. We were talking earlier, and he said he tells #MAGAts that Trump has no power to tell oil companies "pump"!

No, Juan Soto is not a $500M generational talent

His agent, the notorious Scott Boras, wants you to think so, as he talks $500M (non-deferred value) for Soto's next contract (more at The Athletic) after he enters free agency next year. So do some fanbois of either Soto or Boras.

But, he's not.

As I said in various comments on the Reddit post where I saw that?

So far, entering his age-25 season, Juan Soto has had 1 7-WAR year and two at 5.5.

Mike Trout, at the same age, already had two 10-WAR and three 9-WAR years.

Mookie Betts, going through his age-25 to count it, had a 10.5-WAR, a 9.5-WAR and two 6-WAR seasons.

And, Shohei Ohtani (when arm-healthy to pitch as well as bat) is all that.

Part of Soto's falling short is that he simply is not a five-tool player. Trout and Betts are. And, of course, Ohtani, when pitching, is a unicorn equivalent of that. And, Soto never will be a five-tool player. He's not a base stealer, and he's generally not that fast. He's below average on outfield range factor and maybe average on arm strength for right field. 

There's a video at the top link of Soto's "game winning throw" in the season opener. Or you can watch here:

He's in medium right field, no deeper, when he gloves the hit. The throw is a one-hop throw, and also about four feet up the line. He still got the guy out. Why?

Because the Astros' third base coach knows Soto's fielding reputation and decided to challenge him. Against at least half the right fielders in the league, that runner is held at third all along.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if he were DH-ing by age 30.

Setting aside pre-25 vs post-25 on age? Here is all the players that have posted at least one year of 9 WAR or above since 2020. Lemme know when Soto joins that.

As for a future contract? Yeah, some GM will overpay.

Especially if a junior GM at Reddit becomes a GM. The stupidity at r/MLB, where I posted this, is rampant. People talking about the short right field porch at Yankee while ignoring OPS+, WAR, etc. are park-neutralized. People claiming fielding for a corner OF is overrated. People ignoring just how bad he is in the field. People claiming that, at just at age 25, they can project out his post-30 aging curve.

And, when I pointed out Jim Edmonds as a comp on some issues, on the issue of fielding and other things, one fucktard insinuated Edmonds was roiding.

Said chud posted an old piece from r/baseball that he claimed was support, as shown at left. It doesn't. Yes, the cutoff is 4 WAR, not 7, which Edmonds had.

That was after me posting a LONG list of people who were above 10 WAR when they got older, off this B-Ref page with every WAR value, in order, by player, age and season. I went with age-30, instead of 34, because that's where he originally started from, a blanket statement that everybody declines after 30. No they don't. Beyond that? Small sample size on his part.

Chud got butthurt in addition because I included pitchers, even tho his chart backs me up!

Beyond that, I'd never before heard insinuations about Edmonds roiding, so he's full of shit right there. So are a couple of others who are blocked. And, this is going to be expanded, this section, into another post.

Some people there know the facts on Soto's fielding skills or lack thereof. And, as I explained the lay of the land on that play at the plate, a lot of cases, Soto doesn't make that. And, B-Ref notes negative 4/yr on total fielding zone runs and -2/yr on defensive runs saved.

Oh, while we're here, for people who don't get sabermetrics (but like to call others "grandpa")? On the batting side? Runs from positional scarcity is -27 overall, or negative 3/yr. So, combine that with whichever of the two defensive stats one uses, and he costs either 5 or 7 runs a year compared to the typical RF. (Also, under advanced batting, he's slightly below MLB average on how often he takes an extra base, like going from first to third when the batter behind him singles.)

Finally, as far as aging curve and other things? He has NEVER to date done as well as his age 21 and 22 seasons in Washington.

But, especially per the part about likely moving to primary DH by 30 or soon thereafter?

First, I wouldn't give him more than eight years, not 10.

Second, if we put him as a 6-WAR player at $7M/WAR, that's $40-45M, not $50. 

Add it up? If I'm a GM, I give him 8/$325-350 (roughly what teammate Aaron Judge has) with opt-outs after year three and then year five or six. I certainly wouldn't give him 10/$460 (non-deferred value) of Ohtani, which I think itself is an overpay, as we don't know what his pitching return will be like.

And, Redditors? Lemme know when he has an 8-WAR season, let alone a 9-WAR one. Then, we'll talk about generational talent. 

And, mods deleted it because it's "just a blog." Really? Fansided is "just a blog."

How credible is Ohtani, or not?

At a minimum, per this LA Times piece, Shohei Ohtani looks like a naive sucker for his blind trust in body man/Man Friday/interpreter Ippei Mizuhara.

At a maximum, per this story linked within that first one, especially its second half, detailing how much Ohtani both 'lawyered up" AND "PR agencied up" after the news first broke, after he and Mizuhara both started to change their stories, but well before his no questions asked presser, it seems he is still hiding things.

Yes, Ohtani has a large penchant for privacy in the US. And, his bombshell wedding announcement seems to indicate that is true of him in general. Such penchant could either easily leave him a mark for suckers, or else be a good tool for nefariousness.

Next question is how much, or how little, cooperation will "hunk of metal" Rob Manfred get out of Ohtani? Question after that is, if the answer there is "little to none," what does Manfred do next?

Texas Progressives talk this and that

Former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus publicly confirmed the long-rumored last week: Christofascist Tim Dunn indeed did make antisemitic (being directed to the Jewish Straus) and more broadly Christian nationalist comments about government leaders needing to be Christian. Effect it will have on today's Texas GOP? Near zero.

Operation Lone Star has officially backfired with the arrest of a Texas National Guardsman for smuggling. I'm surprised this hasn't happened before, while adding that maybe it has happened and this is just the first time somebody's been caught.

SocraticGadfly, riffing on The Nation, has some critical thoughts about Richard Linklater and Lawrence Wright as squishes, based on Wright's HBO series.

Ball-less Texas House Rethuglicans, vis-a-vis the Smokehouse Fire, apparently don't believe in subpoeanas. (I assume the hearing was being conducted under auspices of the Texas House and thus had subpoena power.)

Off the Kuff sighs and reviews one more whiny sore loser election lawsuit in Harris County.

John Devine: the Clarence Thomas of the Texas Supreme Court. 

Interesting piece on school districts in or near the path of eclipse totality deciding whether or not to cut classes that day. Also interesting is the idea that Kerrville is "tiny." At 25,000, it most certainly is not. A. It's not. B. This is not the first time I've seen this type of rural-urban divide bullshit from the Trib.

Two Denton ISD principals indicted for electioneering. I hope a plea deal means no jail time, but contra the Texas chapter of American Federation of Teachers, they WERE electioneering with school district email. Pure and simple.

TxDOT is a bunch of thugs about I-45 in Houston. (That said, it's my experience that in other states, traffic engineers in general have an arrogant "we know best" attitude.)

Meet the Democrats for Ted Cruz phenomenon.

Why is the Texas Public Policy Foundation getting a tax break not really meant for it and why is weaselshit Comptroller Glenn Hegar not being more forthcoming?

The Fifth Circuit has, very interestingly, sided WITH a state prison inmate who sued TDCJ, stating that 3.5 hours of sleep a night was cruel and unusual punishment. Weirdly and sadly, multiple times in this ruling process, the appellate court has had to override federal district courts who "aren't getting the memo."

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said vote in the HCAD races & demand local elected Democrats, including Dem. Houston City Councilmembers, be part of the fight. 

The Austin Chronicle reports on the change of leadership at Ground Game Texas. 

Adrian Rocha argues that President Biden should pardon all undocumented immigrants who have been arrested on marijuana possession charges.  

The Eyewall summarizes the latest 2024 hurricane season forecast.