Self-hating Blacks, Hispanics and Muslims attend Texas GOP convention

This picture should say it all, or nearly so:

Samar Halabi is the lady on left. That's clearly an African-American woman at right, and apparently a Hispanic in back.

And, they are self-hating, the Black and the Hispanic, even if they don't recognize it.

 

The Texas Trib has the details of the Texas Republican state convention. 

It's a version of Martin Niemoller's old poem, augmented by the fact that racist wingnuts HAVE ALREADY come after you in the past, and some, whom the Texas GOP, or at least its biggest donors, have not disavowed, like Nick Fuentes, are trying to come after you again today, along with Mooslims.

But, I included Muslims in the self-hating, did I not?

First, the lady pictured:

Halabi, a teacher, declined to say how she would vote in November, but said that she is a Republican and always votes.

Well, there you go.

And more, from her husband:

Well, there you really go.

Halabi and her husband, Amjad Muhtaseb, were both registered as delegates for the convention. 

Muhtaseb, an engineer and business owner, said Muslims are conservative by nature. 

“We believe in Adam and Eve,” he said. “We don’t believe in this, multiple gender. We don’t drink. We don’t gamble. We are against pornography.” 

They hope to bring more Muslims into the Republican Party.

And this:

When it comes time to vote in the midterms, Tarek Hussein plans to support his party where he feels it’s deserved. 

“I will vote Republican for the good Republican candidate,” he said.

You've been kicked in the teeth, and told things will get worse in two years at the 2028 state convention, but you're back for more.

Yes, it will get worse.

Strangeabbott last year designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations a terrorist group. Muhtaseb and Tarek Hussein, who founded its Houston chapter, were both not just state GOP attendees but delegates.

Here you are on that:

Throughout the week, members of the convention attempted to remove them as delegates. 

Ultimately, the party concluded that even the full convention did not have the power to boot them. However, the convention on Friday updated its rules so that next time it meets in 2028, the Credentials Committee could vote to remove delegates with ties to a terrorist organization.

Have fun coming back in 2028.

 

Let's add in that CAIR national is suing Strangeabbott over the designation. 

Side note: This illustrates to a T the problems with a Westminster first-past-the-post political system when combined with a strong-presidential leadership model, or strong-governor model at the state level. Conservative Muslims have no home in a party rife with bigotry and third parties that might have room have no traction. That said, the American Solidarity Party, an American version of the Catholic-oriented Christian Democrat parties of Western Europe, would welcome conservative Muslim voters, I'm sure.

 

That said, sometimes, you move. Period. As a third-party voter who’s extended that third-party voting past presidential races to governor and senator, and now past that to lower-level races, I know that.

 

None of this is to suggest that every Black and Hispanic Republican is "self-hating." But, every one engaging in open bigotry against some other race, or here, a world religious organization, or elsewhere, against sexual orientation, is "self-hating" in my book. Note that I did not say you had to become Muslim — or teh gay. But, tolerance without open bigotry? Yeah, short of that, you're self-hating. 

Reporting from the Tex-ass GOP confab

For the Monthly, CD Hooks wrote about heading to the state GOP confab, complete with its ousting of current chair Abraham George and his replacement with another far-right wingnut-squared. He adds observations that Scott Presler, aka The Pustulence as I call him on Shitter (and did not know he was gay) was in town campaigning for Kenny Boy. 

The Trib stuck its nose in as well, noting unity is still not there, to the point that state House Speaker Dustin Burrows, the first to attend a GOP convention, got booed. 

It adds this note about Dannie Goeb and Big John still fighting:

In his Friday speech, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn was a “sore loser” after being defeated in his primary runoff by Attorney General Ken Paxton. He chastised Cornyn for making “bad comments” after the May 26 race and not backing Paxton. 

“Patrick is worried about losing in November,” Cornyn said Saturday. “He should be.

Hah! That said, wake me up when Big John shakes himself free of Donald John in DC.

But, per that piece, the Islamophobia bullshit remains the biggest crowd-pleaser. 

The Trib also notes that beyond the usual nuttery about Sharia law, Strangeabbott also repeated the usual nuttery about 2/3 votes for local property tax increases. 

So, what HAVE Tex-ass Republicans accomplished in 25 years?

At the end of a piece talking about how Tex-ass Democrats might actually miss Kenny Boy Paxton as state AG, as he profiles his four would-be GOP successors, CD Hooks rhetorically asks something that a former county commissioner in my county — a Republican, no less, told me several years ago on education.

He references the nutbar level of the four in a debate sponsored by the Republican Attorney Generals Association: 

Altogether, the debate painted Texas as a weak and collapsing place under imminent threat from about two dozen outside corrupting forces—Islam, gays, New York Jews, Somalians, the Chinese. Which tends to suggest a question that didn’t get asked. If everything the candidates said is true—if the Big D is being subjugated by the crescent moon—and all these things are the product of a quarter century of continuous, uninterrupted Republican rule, what possible reason could there be for conservatives to continue voting Republican?

Indeed. 

Texas GOP TACOs over censures

The Texas GOP's executive committee and Chairman Abraham George did a TACO Trump level cave-in over censuring 10 GOP state Housecritters for going against the state House GOP caucus and voting for Dustin Burrows as Speaker. Five of the 10 before the potential firing squad, including Burrows, weren't even censured. The other five got a "local censure," which means a hand-slap without being blocked from the 2026 GOP primary ballot.

It's clear, per the piece and per comment by the party's legal counsel, that they feared being sued over it. They knew they would almost certainly lose, and they also feared distraction from another ballot issue.

That issue? Suing the state over its open primary laws, a suit which Kenny Boy officially joined, and without even an advance heads-up to Secretary of State Jane Nelson. 

That said, per the first link, the party plans on revisiting it again at the state convention next summer. 

Tots and pears on the Guadalupe, non-duopoly version

As the death toll hit 70 Sunday morning from the Guadalupe River flooding, several questions abound. And have grown since it crossed 100.

The biggest was about warnings. Even with local and state officials offering caveats about lack of prediction in location, nonetheless, with the initial warning of 7 inches in the area already early afternoon on July 3, followed by the first flash flood warning early July 4, I think, per the Trib:

“The heartbreaking catastrophe that occurred in Central Texas is a tragedy of the worst sort because it appears evacuations and other proactive measures could have been undertaken to reduce the risk of fatalities had the organizers of impacted camps and local officials heeded the warnings of the government and private weather sources, including AccuWeather,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter wrote in a statement Saturday morning.

That Kerrville and Kerr County officials are full of shit.

Second question, not even being addressed yet by Tex-ass Rethuglican Congresscritters who voted for Trump's bigly ugly bill? How much will it reduce the accuracy, and cut the amount of advance notice, that the NWS was able to offer in this case, even though it went largely unheeded?

Here's the same second link on that, at least at the professionals' level:

The flooding came amid concerns about staffing levels at the NWS, after the Trump administration fired hundreds of meteorologists this year as part of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. The NWS Austin/San Antonio office’s warning coordination meteorologist announced in April that he was retiring early due to the funding cuts, leading to speculation that vacancies could have impacted forecasters’ response.

As I've half-jokingly said elsewhere, the "Gulf of America" will get renamed back to "Gulf of Mexico" the first major hurricane that spawns in it hits the Texas or Louisiana coast.

Per later comment in the story, they're adequately staffed NOW. Six months from now? A year? 

Zeynep Tufekci talks more about that official, Paul Yura, in a column asking other questions, like — why haven't more camps moved their camping areas just, even a few feet higher and a few yards further away from the course of the river? 

[A]t Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors were washed away, the kids whose cabins were on just slightly higher ground all survived. Only those in the lower cabins were lost. Those lower cabins were less than a quarter of a mile away from the higher cabins. Every moment would have counted.

There you are. 

On Yura, it's not just about total staffing; it's about loss of experience. But, per places like LinkedIn, you'll see capitalist America, like the Elmo Musk behind DOGE, can't and/or won't put a dollar value on that. (Neither will neoliberal Democrats except when it's worth political haymaking.) 

Update: It does appear that NWS cuts grounded several warning balloons. 

The first piece has bullshit from dog-shooting Homeland Security head Kristi Noem trying to hand-wave away these concerns. 

The third question? How much do Democrats really want to politicize this, since Dear Leader's administration is partially to blame, at least career staffers in it? How much do you want to politicize it, per two paragraphs above, because Dear Leader was one of two people to make sure the "vaunted" Paris climate accords are voluntary unenforceable Jell-O? How much do they want to support putting Tweety Eastland, the surviving Mystic spouse, on the legal hook publicly?

How much of this is the fault of the youth camps' staff? After all, both the 1 am and 4 am July Fourth alerts were available by cellphone alerts. Mystic's co-owner Dick Eastland is among the dead, so he can't be asked, but other owners of other camps, and managers of them, certainly can be. Or, per The Barbed Wire's piece that references self-backpatting of state and federal officials, will this get swept under the rug?

And, to go there? These are Christian girls camps, even if not affiliated with a particular church? How many girls are told that climate change is a myth? What about camp owners and staffers?

Refudiating the likes of Chip Roy in that Barbed Wire piece? This was not a once in a century flood. The Monthly, like others, references the 1987 flood in Comfort. 

So does the first Trib piece, at top link, which has a good "wrap-up" on some of these issues:

Billy Lawrence, a 73-year-old San Angelo man, has dealt with this type of tragedy before. During flooding in the summer of 1987, he spent more than 30 days looking for bodies. The first one he found was of a child in a tree, 20 feet up.

But he said this flood is twice as bad as it was in 1987. On Saturday, he was back patrolling the river for bodies. A former volunteer with the Red Cross, he said he's gotten used to the morbid practice.

“I’m used to death. I’ve been around it a lot," Lawrence said.

He noted there are about 20 camps along the river in this area and said the camp counselors should receive training to check the weather every night.

"I'm not blaming them. They just have to do that,” he said.

Refudiating Danny Goeb, the jefe during this with Strangeabbott out of the Pointy Abandoned Object State? His Tex-ass Senate, and Rethuglicans in the House, killed HB 13, a bill that would have updated state warning systems. 

Tots and pears are no substitute for training and the acceptance of modern realities.

And, even if campers can't have cell phones on, per this Texas Monthly story, at least at that particular camp, camp counselors, managers and owners sure as hell can. Or you can have a weather-band radio that gets the same type of emergency alerts.

As for the climate change issue? You don't have to go back to that 1987 flood, per the top link:

The region has experienced catastrophic flooding before, including the 2015 Wimberley flood that left 13 people dead, as well as major floods in 2007 and 2002.

Notice how close together these things are now getting?

Last week, moved from the Texas Progressives Roundup, we had Evil MoPac grappling with the Hill Country flooding tragedy. I moved it here because after it going all nice and polite on getting to the bottom of things, this:

There will be a thorough accounting of what infrastructure issues and human errors may have been present and, hopefully, there will be common sense policy changes to try to reduce the terrible human and propery tolls of Texas floods in the future.

And this:

But we also need to grapple with the fact that this tragedy and the incredible rainfall amounts that caused it were not totally unprecedented and the impacted area has long been at risk for this type of event, even if rare. It’s that feeling of helplessness that will be one of the hardest things to process going forward: we can make improvements (including to local warning systems) and increase spending to try and solve the flooding problem, but it might never be enough.

Are both untrue.

The former is untrue per what I said about climate change and Tex-ass Rethuglican leadership, if nothing else. Any "changes" will be a right-wing corporate socialism bailout of capitalism.

The latter will be untrue starting with climate change, which the "we" wingnuts running Tex-ass won't grapple with. It's also untrue in that, from all I read, ownership and management of the various camps easily could have done a better job with the resources they had — ie, smartphone warnings — as could have local governments.

That's as Inside Climate Change notes this is more and more NOT a one-off — as the death toll crosses 100 July 8. 

And, per my update about the killed HB 13? Stop cutting these people slack, you fucktard. 

I suspect lawsuits are coming — and they need to come.

(I mean, good old BlueAnon Neil Aquino gets it right on this being a political issue, but gets it wrong of course on not looking at how it's various forms of business as usual for both duopoly parties.)

And, Blue Anons, do you REALLY want to politicize the FEMA angle of removing parts of Camp Mystic from the 100-year floodplain? Per the AP, via the Trib, that would be the OBAMA-era FEMA. 

In response to an appeal, FEMA in 2013 amended the county's flood map to remove 15 of the camp's buildings from the hazard area. Records show that those buildings were part of the 99-year-old Camp Mystic Guadalupe, which was devastated by last week's flood. After further appeals, FEMA removed 15 more Camp Mystic structures in 2019 and 2020 from the designation. Those buildings were located on nearby Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, a sister site that opened to campers in 2020 as part of a major expansion and suffered less damage in the flood. ..

[Syracuse University associate professor Sarah] Pralle said the appeals were not surprising because communities and property owners have used them successfully to shield specific properties from regulation.

Ooopppssss .... 

But wait, there's more! 

Pralle, who reviewed the amendments for AP, noted that some of the exempted properties were within 2 feet of FEMA's flood plain by the camp's revised calculations, which she said left almost no margin for error. She said her research shows that FEMA approves about 90% of map amendment requests, and the process may favor the wealthy and well-connected.

And, with that, we have the answer that, in the past at least, the Eastlands were partially responsible for the current deaths. And, we have material evidence of negligence, even willful negligence, when somebody drops this nice polite ownership bullshit and sues. 

Will Texas Monthly mention that? Mimi Swartz's hagiography of the Eastlands and Forest Wilder's laundry list of what went wrong both failed to. 

Abrahm Lustgarten, who has a great book on climate change, now weighs in at Pro Publica. 

Robert Roberson and Texas GOP internecine battles

Shock me that Ken Paxton is lying about Robert Roberson. Good on state House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence for doing a point-by-point rebuttal. Also shock me that Kenny Boy has Tony Tinder(holt), Briscoe Cain and six other House GOP wingnuts attacking the House committee with biased language.

That said, per this Trib piece, the eight wingnuts aren't alone. As noted, the Court of Criminal Appeals has NEVER ordered a new trial for a death row inmate off the 2013 junk science law.

Besides Kenny Boy, the House committee members, and other conservatives with a conscience, face a bigger obstruction.

Danny Boy Goeb is dead set against more criminal justice reform, or more teeth for the junk science law. Contra his spox's blathering? A key tell, the House passed a bill last year to put more teeth into the law. It never even got a committee assignment in the Senate.

That then said, many House Republicans, like Jeff Leach, have gotten firmer on this issues, working with the likes of Democrat Joe Moody.

Texas Progressives talk state GOP, Uvalde, abortion, lizards

I'm a secularist, so no thoughts and prayers, or tots and pears, for people in Valley View, but yes, sympathy for the families, remembrance of the dead, and finally, recognition of the frailty, and absurdity in a Camus way, of life in general.

==

The Texas GOP has gone even more batshit crazy, per state convention resolutions, plus shown that, more than ever, it's afraid of competition. (Don't be shocked; both duopoly parties are.) Plus, not that it's ever stopped either Tex-ass GOP voters or its leadership before, but, the "win a majority of counties for statewide office" is clearly unconstitutional — until and unless SCOTUS wants to undo Baker et al. More batshitness starts with the election of Abraham George as party leader. That's even as the disarray increases, and the money, other than Wilks and Dunn type drops, slows down.

Meanwhile, everybody there had fun kicking Dade "Dade" Phelan.

After getting a settlement against the city of Uvalde, parents are now suing Daniel Defense, Activision and Facebook's parent. They're also suing the DPS. Good luck on both.

The Monthly casts a sharp eye on the Board of Pardons and Paroles work in getting Daniel Perry off the hook.

Off the Kuff is not surprised that no one likes the guidance on abortion provided by the Texas Medical Board. 

SocraticGadfly salutes the potential, though not environmentally guaranteed, Endangered Species Act listing for the dunes sagebrush lizard.

New Mexico has a state ethics commission that actually works, contra ours here in Tex-ass. 

Liberal American Zionism is dead, dead, dead. Maybe here in Tex-ass, Kuff will write about Zionist repression of pro-Palestinian student protestors. (Nahh, would undercut his BlueAnon tribalism.)

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said that traitors don’t honor brave service & Memorial Day. (Note: Aquino's definition of "traitor" is #BlueAnon tribalist. But, rather than delete, I'm leaving it here with that note.)

Space City Weather explains what a derecho is.

The New Atlantis uses the proposed I-35 expansion in Austin as an illustration of "induced demand".

CultureMap previews an imminent docuseries on the history of the Texas Renaissance Festival.

Texas Monthly interviews Colin Allred, and annotates their interview as they go. (And doesn't push as hard as it could.)

Finally, congratulations to the Harris County Public Library system and the Houston Children's Museum for winning 2024 National Medals for Museum and Library Service.

Cooke GOP candidate forum an eyeroll

Cooke County Republican Women had the first of two candidate forums Jan. 4. At the regional level, it featured the four contenders for Texas Senate District 30, and locally, the four for County Commissioner Precinct 1.

It was a hoot even before the forum itself, in the GOP wimmin's business affairs. A speaker said they were soliciting for thank you cards for the border, presumably for Border Patrol agents and Texas National Guard members also serving there. I imagine something like this:

Thank you cards for the border? 

“We’re glad you’re tonking a tonk!” 

So, are La Migra, and the Texas National Guard, not getting enough money? 

Why doesn’t Strangeabbott directly pay them?

Naturally, this is called an Americanism project. I tried not to laugh out loud, thinking of Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce mentioning exactly this on a M*A*S*H episode.

The forum? They're nutters. (I had not yet googled full bios of any of them.)

On State Senate District 30, Jace Yarbrough is, if not a full antivaxxer, then a COVID nutter. Brent Hagenbuch, like Yarbrough, is a wingnut culture warrior. Cody Clark sounded humane, but wearing a baseball cap at such a debate looked a bit off-putting. And, after his intro, he sounded like just another Republican, also mentioning “woke” and supporting book banning. Yarbrough thinks a health clinic in Denton ISD is the camel’s nose for “trans care,” though he didn’t say that. Carrie De Moor a nutter on health issues, claiming that even Republicans were trying to promote universal health care, while at the same time claiming that this was about insurance companies, too. De Moor said Arizona’s system works on vouchers. Her answer otherwise seemed to indicate she opposed standardized testing for private schools or homeschooling with voucher money. (And thus my idea that she wasn't good enough for Dan Patrick on vouchers is kaput.)

At the local level, in the commissioners court?

None of the challengers knocked off the king, Gary Hollowell, at least in public, on the Precinct 1 County Commissioner race. Casey Fain came closest with his repeated emphasis on a capital improvement plan. Phil Elmore was the one candidate of the four to mention being a constitutional conservative.

Tony Gonzales censured, rats come out of woodwork

San Antonio Congresscritter Tony Gonzales faced excommunication Saturday from the Texas GOP executive committee over his stancs on things like wanting some gun control issues, post-Uvalde (which is in his district) and calling out cheap GOP attempts to politicize the border. (Biden's giving them much of what they want, anyway. It wasn't "excommunication," only censure, but by not even showing up, Gonzales indicated what he thought of it.

And, he has been so censured. He actually got 5 votes in support of him. No word if there's going to be some challenge to those 5 in the future. As the Trib notes, the last time the state committee censured a Republican official, it was San Antonio non-wingnut Joe Straus. He ain't a "moderate," Trib; things like this, your GOP Overton window drifting, undercut your standing.

===

And, the first rat has already filed to challenge him. Funky Wingnut Medina, Julie Clark, Medina County GOP head, is in the race. I'm sure there will be many others

Texas, national GOP starting to split over Mar-a-Lago

Chris Hooks talks about Texas Rethuglicans' reaction to the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, and their following non-reaction, so far, to the attack on the FBI's Cincinnati office. (Or to Trump's admission that he was able to see the raid, for the most part, on Mar-a-Lago's CCTV security cameras live, undercutting the whole planted evidence claim.) That said, he ignores that Dan Crenshaw is again a voice of semi-reason within the GOP, when he tweeted sarcastic "congrats" to Dems for getting his fellow Rethugs to call for abolishing the FBI. The Dallas Observer has more, while also overlooking Crenshaw.

Axios, noting cracks emerging within the GOP, actually references Crenshaw, who MAGAs are again attacking as a RINO and bringing up his support for Liz Cheney last year.

Crenshaw is enough of a nutter in other ways, I don't need to take any steps to normalize him, unlike some Dems. That said, VD Hooks and Simone Carter in Dallas don't need to write blank checks to apocalyptic absolutism.  In Carter's case, maybe the new Observer was already sent to print, but you can still update the online version. VD wrote only last Friday, though, after the DOJ released some additional documents and after some Rethugs started pulling in their horns, or maybe never stuck them all the way out in the first place.

Texas GOP voters: You reap what you sow

Texas Supreme Court
Justice Don Willett

For the first time ever, in the two-decade-plus history of multiple school financing lawsuits against the state of Texas, the state won on Friday. The full opinion is here.

And hence, the headline of the post. It's like "What's the Matter with Kansas," only more so.

Yes, the Texas Supreme Court's been all-GOP for some time, but it has shifted steadily further right. And steadily backward.

Sounding like something from the pre-Brown v Board of Education era, straight out of Plessy v Ferguson, Justice Don Willett, who wrote the opinion (there were two concurrences) said that money doesn't equate to educational quality.

Really? Then why do urban parents move to richer suburbs, from either the central city or poorer suburbs? Part of it is racial, but part is financial.

That said, out in small towns and rural areas, there's no rich suburbs where to move. But, people continue to vote against their own self-interest.

I'm in a part of the state where one of the two State Board of Education candidates believes President Obama used to be a gay prostitute, and stuff arguably even weirder. How does electing a candidate like that help rural schools get more money from the state?

It doesn't.

Worse yet, Bruner used to be a kindergarten teacher herself.

And, contra Cherokee County GOP Chairwoman Tammy Blair, Bruner is NOT "a nice older lady." Bigotry normally has hatred behind it. Her comments appear to reflect racism that she's projected back onto Obama (East Texas, especially Deep East Texas, still has plenty of that), gay-bashing, and more. There's nothing nice about that.

And, contra her opponent in the runoff, Keven Ellis, sorry, but for many people, thoughts like hers ARE conservative, and ARE Christian.

That said, there's no guarantee Ellis will be that much more enlightened, should he win the GOP runoff, and presumably, the general election.

And, it's the Texas Lege, not the SBOE, who make the funding decisions. And, so far, my Republican state rep and Republican state senator are both practicing duck and cover politics on this issue. And, that's with my state senator not up for election this cycle and my state rep facing no general election race.

Per the header, I feel sorry for Texas children in central cities, poorer first-ring suburbs, and small towns and the country.

Do I feel sorry for their parents, though?

If they voted Republican, not really.

Their own scriptures tell them that, in the old KJV: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," or in modern English: "As a man sows, so shall he reap."

Yes, the state Supremes, as well as the Texas Lege and the statewide executive offices, have been all-GOP for more than a decade. But, their holders, and their party, have drifted barreled hard farther right in the past half-dozen years or so.

I mean, former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson was a plaintiffs' lawyer! The court rejected a man formerly one of its own, who was part of the 2005 school finance ruling that said, yes, Texas did have a de facto statewide property tax.

UPDATE, May 18: The surest sign yet this ruling was fucked up is that Justice Willett is on Trump's SCOTUS short list.

More money-wasting and cronyism from the Texas GOP

From a press release by Ag Commissioner-elect Sid Miller yesterday:
Today, the transition team of Texas Agriculture Commissioner-elect Sid Miller announced that Texas Facilities Commission Executive Director Terry Keel will be leaving that agency and will be joining the Texas Department of Agriculture as an Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture. The former state lawmaker, Travis County Sheriff, and criminal prosecutor will assume the newly created position of Assistant Commissioner for Enforcement, Consumer Protection, and Border Security. In that capacity he will oversee the department’s extensive inspection division and will protect Texas consumers from fraud and abuse by those the department regulates.
Why?

First, those have been responsibilities of the Ag Department for years and years, and theoretically (but often not actually) getting done without a new assistant commissioner.

So, there's the money-wasting part.

The crony part?

The first Republican sheriff of Travis County, as Miller touts Keel, eventually lost in the 2006 GOP primary when he tried to move from the Texas House to the Court of Criminal Appeals. It's actually kind of sad, because he's basically a non-wingnut Republican.

And, that said, maybe that's a bit of positivity about Miller.

Looks like #GregAbbott is mad about being fingered as a press dodger

Poppy Bush, one Republican unafraid of being with Obama.
Dallas Morning News photo

A new campaign email from our state's top legal spendthrift blasts Wendy Davis for having a "closed door" meeting with President Obama while he was in Austin for the LBJ Library's civil rights conference. Here's a sample of one story link:

Obama spoke briefly with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis after his civil rights speech at the Lyndon Johnson presidential library.

Davis campaign spokescritter Bo Delp also noted the "brief." Other media links say the same, that it was a brief meeting.

And? Abbott's whining?

A POTUS is also leader of his party, not just of the USofA and mythically of the free world. Shrub Bush held off the record, or personal, meetings with GOP candidates regularly. And Davis was visibly at the event even before the private meeting with Obama. So, the idea that Davis is deliberately dodging Obama also doesn't wash. She was at the same event as him, and was seen going behind those mythical closed doors with him.

Besides, as pictured, Poppy Bush saw Obama. There you go.

However, that hyped hypocrisy all pales in comparison to walking out of his own campaign called press conference. Or rather, never walking into it in the first place. Abbott's rightly been getting nailed for this, and now, this is his cheap, thin-skinned way of firing back.

I'm sorry, "walking" is a word that when literally, implies use of one's legs. He knows it's a dirty liberal trick to talk about walking, standing or anything similar. I promise not to reference this further ... except when it's necessary to do so.

I mean, even for Abbott, this is sophomoric.

Notice that he doesn't even talk about his own appearance, or the general GOP comment, on the LBJ civil rights seminar.

TxDOT dumps state cheapness on Texas counties

It's technically not an unfunded mandate, but it's clearly in the spirit of one. And it will primarily hit smaller, rural counties, the ones with the least free money.


For Texans who live in rural counties, they're likely familiar with alert signs on state and U.S. highways like "CR 340 <--- ---="" 171="" or="">" or "CR 292 <--->" advising that the intersection with said county road is about one-quarter mile ahead, and the county road goes left, right, or both ways.

Well, the Texas Department of Transportation has said it will no longer pay to maintain such signs.  Counties have the option of paying TxDOT to maintain or replace them, or else letting TxDOT take them down without replacement if they're damaged or deemed to be past their shelf life.

It's not huge, in that rural residents of farm roads are probably giving good directions to would-be visitors, anyway.

It's just that it's another sign of state of Texas cheapness.

And, given that one party has controlled the state of Texas for more than a decade, we know who to blame.

Right, Mr. Abbott, as you talk about how you won't stand for wheelchair speeds on I-35?

The untruths and half-truths of Bill Flores

Attending an area Republican Party event recently, Flores, Texas' District 17 Congressman, had plenty of red meat for his audience. Too bad a lot of it either directly was not true, or at a minimum, didn't tell the story behind what he presented.

To take a look at the top ones:

1. Claiming the post-2010 GOP House has shrunk the size of the budget. Yes, by cutting the safety net even for the white "tea party" types that vote GOP, cutting veterans' benefits and more.
2. Related to this, talking about the "dangerously skyrocketing deficit," even though everybody knows that the deficit has declined for multiple consecutive years AND that Flores, later in his speech, mentioned ... No. 1 above!
3. Calling the flat tax the "fair tax," as is normal for GOPers.
4. Calling for Social Security reform, without (related to No. 2) specifying that this "reform" would be from privatizing Social Security.
5. Calling for "restoring our military," without mentioning that GOP Congresscritters (albeit with fair Democratic support) and a GOP president whose name Flores only mentioned once "broke" the military.
6. Claiming that Edward Snowden's leaks set our military back centuries, because he leaked military secrets to Russia and China.
7. Blaming Obama for unemployment and underemployment, without mentioning that the GOP has fought every attempt to extend unemployment benefits, create new job training and more.
8. Saying "stupid cap and trade" led him to run for Congress in 2010. Yeah, it was stupid, instead of a carbon tax.
9. Talking about Reagan "winning the Cold War" (rather than Gorbachev) and "producing unprecedented economic growth."
10. Calling for "energy security" while not discussing how mythical that is, how wrong-headed his oil-and-gas approach to that is, and more.

And, last but not least:
Reading the names of the dead West first responders without mentioning that the hardcore anti-regulatory stance of today's GOP at the state level led directly to their deaths.

That right there makes him a hypocrite. A big fat hypocrite.

Biographical BS from my new GOP Congresscritter, Bill Flores

Bill Flores

I loove the BS of the new post-redistricting Congresscritter for my area, Bill Flores. Here's a tidbit of it, from his Congressional biography page. A descendent of a ranching family and Texas A&M grad, he says "the Flores family never asked for or sought government assistance." Really? No ag price supports? No Pell grants or other help to go to A&M?

He claims to have paid his own way through A&M, but says nothing about his MBA from Houston Baptist. Nor does he mention government-guaranteed student loans.

Besides, he got plenty of gummint handouts in his "private sector" employment:

Before retiring to pursue public service, Flores worked in the energy industry for nearly three decades.

Hey, Bill? If you worked for Big Oil (which is what "energy industry" means in Texas, right?) you and your company had your faces in the gummint hog trough. And, if you were an accountant, you know in detail about just what help you got.

In fact, per your Wikipedia bio, you were a fricking drain on the gummint:

During his time with Marine Drilling he personally oversaw Bankruptcy filings which resulted in a 7.5 million loss to the federal government.

Yeah, a whole shitload of gummint assistance.

AND!

You lied about that when you first ran for Congress. Per the Dallas Morning News:

The Republican challenger who has assailed Rep. Chet Edwards for supporting taxpayer bailouts once led his company through a bankruptcy that let it avoid a $7.5 million debt to the U.S. government.

Although Bill Flores, a retired Bryan energy executive, has said all creditors were fully repaid with interest, court records show otherwise. The 1992 bankruptcy allowed Marine Rig 200 Inc. to repay just $3 million of $10.5 million owed to the U.S. Maritime Administration, which held the mortgage on a drilling rig the company owned.

"The value of hindsight tells me the deal worked fine for everyone but the federal government," Flores said Thursday, describing his earlier contention about creditor compensation as largely accurate.

Gimme a break. Gimme a "fuck you John Boehner" break.

Beyond that, you were born on an Air Force base. If your dad went to college, he got GI Bill help.

And, per your bankruptcy, you're another Texas MBA grad in the oil bidness who didn't know a damn thing about it. And, no, we don't miss "him" yet, eitehr.

Texas Cong Dist 25 heats up

The Republican primary runoff for the gerrymandered, Hill Country-based U.S. Congressional District 25 in Texas is heating up.


In the one corner, we have GOP establishmentarian, one-time Texas Secretary of State (and rumored one-time "friend" of Rick Perry's — ah, weren't those the days, eh?) Roger Williams.


In the other corner is Tea Party favorite Wes Riddle.

(Update, July 31, 8:40 p.m. — And it dies back down. Whether my wondering about Democratic crossovers for Williams was true or not, he's off to a comfortable lead and should have this race in the bag.) 


The  biggest claim against Williams is that he's lying about opposing the auto bailout. Given that his wife, president of his group of auto dealerships, personally lobbied for it, this is a clear lie in spirit, at least.


Riddle? The biggest claim against him is that he's lying about being a resident of the district. The truth is he appears to be outside it, but not way outside of it. Stand by for a "clarification."


Now, given that this is a largely rural district, the fun is that this is about as clear of a taste as we will get about relative strength of Tea Party vs. Texas GOP establishment. I wouldn't be surprised to see Riddle win this.

Riddle is helped by coming off as "relatively sane" for a tea partier, and by that "West Point instructor" portion of his resume.

A few hours from now, we'll see if he does it.

I'm also curious, since early voting was fairly heavy, if some Democrats aren't crossing over to vote for Williams.

Texas GOP, affirmative action, quotas, and lies

Let me get this "straight." The GOP says it hates affirmative action as "quotas" ... BUT ...  the Texas GOP executive committee has male and female co-chairs for each State Senate district.

Even by modern Republican standards, with the hypocrisy of claiming to be the "Party of Lincoln," that venerates a Barry Goldwater who was fed up with much of the Religious Right long before today's tea partier version, and lyingly adores a deficit-busting Keynesian Ronald Reagan, blatant implementation of quotas is pretty low.

Smoke and mirrors on Texas budget

I expected this a month ago, but we're starting to get concrete evidence now that the state GOP is ready to do that.

Tricky Ricky Perry: 'Budget cuts for thee, but not for me'

Proof that Rick Perry, like Barack Obama, is Just.Another.Politician? Proof there's nothing compassionate about his conservativism?

The budget proposals being batted around the Texas Lege have nary a cent of money being cut from his salary.

House and Senate draft budgets make no cuts to the salaries of Texas' statewide elected officials — all Republicans — and the leaders of the state's largest agencies, including the Texas Education Agency, the department of Health and Human Services, and the departments of Aging and Disability Services and Family Protective Services.

Yes, the Lege, not the Gov., marks up preliminary budgets. But, where's Perry's voice, now that a budget first draft is on the table, saying, "Take 10 percent off my salary"?

Answer: Nowhere.

That said, I was ready, when I first saw this, for some CONservatives to say it wouldn't matter.

Sure enough, other elected folks say even if you trim these salaries, it wouldn't make a real budget dent.

Lawmakers didn't reduce salaries because "even if you cut 'em in half, it's not going to be that much money" in a two-year budget that currently spends $182 billion ... the Senate's chief budget writer, Sen. Steve Ogden of Bryan, said.

Like other Just.Another.Politician types, Ogden refuses to see that it's a perception issue.

And, here's the numbers:

As governor, Perry is paid $150,000 annually, the same salary paid to Attorney General Greg Abbott, Comptroller Susan Combs and 16 of the state's 18 judges on the Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals. The chief justice of the Supreme Court and presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals make $152,500.

State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples and Railroad Commissioners Elizabeth Ames Jones, Michael Williams and David Porter all make $137,500.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst , who is elected statewide and presides over the Senate, is paid a state senator's salary of $7,200.

Agency heads typically make much more than Perry and the other elected officials.

That said, former state rep. Talmadge Heflin, although claiming last week the state doesn't face a real deficit, DOES grasp the symbolism. Let's see how much the tea partiers push this one.

That said, why haven't Texas Dems picked up on the symbolism angle yet?