#WendyDavis has a filibuster win after all on reproductive rights — at least for now

Photos via Houston Chronicle

I'll be damned.

The Nine, shockingly, overturned the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and said that the part of last year's Texas abortion law that shut the state down to just eight clinics should be blocked from implementation.

Again, I'll be damned:

In an unsigned order, the justices sided with abortion rights advocates and health care providers in suspending an Oct. 2 ruling by a panel of the New Orleans-based U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that Texas could immediately apply a rule making abortion clinics statewide spend millions of dollars on hospital-level upgrades. 

The court also put on hold a separate provision of the law only as it applies to clinics in McAllen and El Paso that requires doctors at the facilities to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The admitting privileges remains in effect elsewhere in Texas.

That part is at least interesting; I don't know if it's related to the largely Hispanic nature of both areas, their being on the border, or what. We'll see how that plays out.

It may be in part due to wanting some basic access to abortion without too much distance encumbrance, as the Chron notes. The New York Times reinforces that, noting that Texas had no clinics open west or south of San Antonio.

Plus, this may ultimately turn out to be a long-term as well as a short-term win.

Here's that part:

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas said they would have ruled against the clinics in all respects.

Those gents represent just three votes.

Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing vote on abortion, is not on that list. That's a "tell" right there.

Interestingly, neither is the chief, John Roberts.

One of both of those two may ultimately, per the unsigned order, decide that admitting privileges is not a "bridge too far." We'll have to stay tuned.

Like me, Lyle Denniston of Scotusblog sees at least hints of some bright lines in this ruling. Lines which the current court will not cross, tenuous as they may be.

Per multiple blog posts by friend Perry, this is typical of Abbott, Dan Patrick, and their ilk among the hardcore right on this issue. They give themselves an inch, then decide to take a mile, that "mile" ultimately being to outlaw abortion entirely. Well, at least for now, contra Think Progress, it looks like Roe v. Wade stays safe.

That said?

Too bad Davis has spent the majority of her campaign running away from her own filibuster.

#Dodgers make big move with Friedman; Mattingly firing talk heats up

Andrew Friedman, Dollars-bound / Photo via CBS Sports

After a week or so of rumors, the Los Angeles Dollars, as Ken Rosenthal has called them, have swept in and gotten their hoped-for baseball genius.

(Tampa Bay) Rays executive vice president of baseball operations and GM Andrew Friedman has left the team to join the Dodgers, both teams have announced. Friedman takes over as the Dodgers president of baseball operations and (will?) be allowed to hire his own GM. …
 Friedman's role will presumably be similar to Theo Epstein's with the Cubs. Epstein is the team's president of baseball operations and Jed Hoyer is the GM. Ned Colletti, who had been the Dodgers GM since 2005, will remain with the team as a senior advisor to Kasten.

Very interesting. Of course, a guy named Ned Colletti was holding that position. Kasten and company booted him upstairs to a yet-undefined senior management position. 

Is manager Don Mattingly next? Analysts say that he doesn't fit Friedman's style, whatever that may be. And let's not forget that Magic Johnson is a part owner of the Dodgers. That's the Magic who, as a Lakers player, got Paul Westhead fired as head coach AFTER he'd won an NBA title, in favor of Pat Riley. And, of course, Riley turned out better. So, don't tell me Magic isn't tempted. Semi-jokingly, the #grit-laden hero of the Dollars' last World Series, Kirk Gibson, is available.

And, the Dollars' loss of the National League Division Series this year was capped with a managerial decision that drew plenty of head-scratching, namely,  the benching of Yasiel Puig, still arguably the team's best everyday player despite being in a slump.

I don't know if Mattingly is gone. But, when your managerial decisions make Mike Matheny look brilliant and even Ned Yost above average?

Joe Maddon, your new LA Dollars manager in waiting?
(Reinhold Matay / Associated Press)

The Rays' current manager, Joe Maddon, is getting some speculation, of course. He's under contract for another year, though. A low-market team like the Rays would charge a high price to trade him. Does Friedman want to wait a year? Would Mattingly want to wait a year with the feeling that, short of winning a World Series, he's a very lame duck? If he asked for a buyout, would anybody else want to come in as a full-season interim?

Also, does anybody know if Maddon wants to live in LA half the year (or more) or not? I think that’s the first question newly-elated Dodger fans should be asking; and Tampa fans shouldn’t totally lose heart. OTOH, he was a protege of Mike Scioscia, so he's been in SoCal before.

Maddon, meanwhile, is saying the right things for Tampa fans right now.

Maddon said he and his wife recently moved into a Tampa home once owned by former USC and Tampa Bay Buccaneers Coach John McKay. 

 "I'm really embedded here pretty well," he said. "The roots are pretty strong. We have a great infrastructure here. We have a great operation. We have great people. 

"There's so much to like. There's only one negative. That's the ballpark. It's a big negative. But that's about it." 

That said, how could he do otherwise? If he said "I love LA," then Bud Selig's kicking him, Friedman, or both, in the ass for tampering.

And, per this 2013 ESPN story, he sure seems to be happy where he is now, not just as a manager, but in general.

On the third hand? He can name his price on a new contract. Would it be the moon? Would Tampa pay? Surely not, on the second rhetorical.

My thought? If Friedman really wants him, and he really wants to move, if the price is mainly money (to the degree Rob Manfred will allow) and draft choices, pull that trigger.

Next question is, will Friedman get the Dollars over the National League playoffs hump and into the World Series, whoever his manager is, where they've not been since 1988? In the last decade, their traditional rivals, the Giants, sport two WS wins, and old-time NL foe Cardinals have two wins and two other appearances.

It's not guaranteed. With a Dollars-sized payroll come Dollars-sized expectations to show how "Moneyball" performs on financial steroids. It's my contention that the alleged father of "Moneyball," Billy Beane, turned down the chance to be Theo Epstein in Boston before the Sawks hired the real Theo, for precisely that reason. (Sandy Alderson is as much the actual father of "Moneyball" as Beane.)

And, with a payroll that could approach $250M next year, especially with dead-armed middle reliever Brian Wilson exercising his $9.5M player option, and semi-dead-armed starter Dan Haren an idiot if he doesn't do the same with his $10M player option, that's a lot of lux tax money to pay in Los Angeles. That's not to mention the retirement, and pitching hole that needs filling, of Josh Beckett, and the free agency of Hanley Ramirez, either.

#Krugman guzzles #Obamiac Kool-Aid, the full party jug, gets an F for #fail

Paul Krugman is "doowwwn" with his Obama bromance!

Paul Krugman, possibly the best of the New York Times' op-ed columnists (of course, that could be seen as similar to the best bagel in Bismarck, North Dakota, and besides, overall, Gail Collins is better), once an Obama critic for the president having the Teddy Roosevelt-quipped "backbone of a chocolate eclair," now calls him "one of the most consequential, and yes, successful, presidents in American history."

Man, Krugman could't do much better, or rather, worse, if he were paid White House PR flak. And, if he were paid, it would be by the soft bigotry of low expectations count, because that's what ultimately drives twaddle like this.

Here's Krugman's tout list:

His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it's working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it's much more effective than you'd think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy.

I'll go through that in detail in a minute.

First, Krugman dismisses the likes of Cornel West, who call him a fake progressive. Actually, I'd dismiss West by calling him a fake whiner; the reality of Obama's neoliberalism on fiscal issues, sellout on civil liberties issues, and other things, were all visible before the 2008 general election — a general election in which West avidly supported Dear Leader.

On health care, Krugman ignores that Obamacare was:
1. Written by AHIP and Mod Max Baucus;
3. Dilatory to the nth degree in its passage — whatever Dear Leader wanted should have been passed long, long before Scott Brown was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts
3. Based on Dear Leader lying all along about his stance on single-payer.

But, that's all pre-passage stuff.

Let's look at post-passage stuff.
1. More and more information that the most neoliberal parts of Obamacare, like electronic patient records, are nowhere near what they were cracked up to be
2. A horrible rollout (hey, Krugman, per Mike Dukakis, the fish rots at the top, especially on a "signature achievement")
3. Relatively modest proof so far of restraint of medical inflation rates.

Specific to that link on EPRs? From that story:

Frustrated medical professionals across the country told The Dallas Morning News that the expensive systems — the technology used by Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, part of a $200 million investment by its parent company — are often unwieldy and problematic.
 (Experts) have documented cases where patient histories and other information have seemingly vanished from software or ended up in the wrong place.
 And researchers have found that emergency room doctors are more frenzied in keeping up with data demands because of the complicated systems, even hiring personal scribes to input information for them on the fly.

That said, per the story, EPRs were actually fobbed off on the American public by Shrub Bush. But Obama gleefully embraced them.

Krugman touts a drop of about 10 million people without health insurance. Nice, but far short of the 25-30 million mentioned not too many years ago.

Krugman then claims single-payer wasn't politically feasible. I'd argue it was before Scott Brown was elected, at least. But, because it was never in the playbook of a man who, during the 2008 primaries, didn't "get" the need for the individual mandate, or else was lying on that issue too, what else can you say?

Financial reform? Here's Krugman:

You often hear Dodd- Frank, the financial-reform bill that Obama signed into law in 2010, dismissed as toothless and meaningless. It isn't. It may not prevent the next financial crisis, but there's a good chance that it will at least make future crises less severe and easier to deal with.

Well, if that ain't praising with faint damns, what is? I'll skip past the rest of this section, because it's that bad. It's ugly. It's doubly bad in that Krugman doesn't even mention Tim Geithner's hiring by name. It's triply bad because Krugman brings out the "soft bigotry of low expectations" card by comparing US recovery from the Great Recession to that of the European Union.

(Of course, Obama's whole presidency, when discussed by Kool-Aid drinkers, whether regular ones or Johnny-come-latelys, benefits from the "soft bigotry of low expectations" compared to Shrub.)

Krugman then dismisses with a light shrug Obama's approach to war crimes, etc., not even mentioning Dear Leaders "we tortured some folks" phrase.

And, the violations of civil liberties that got EXPANDED by Dear Leader?

Krugman mentions them not at all.

Hell, David Frum could have written something just like this from the other side of the aisle about Shrub.

Seriously, while Obama may not be in the bottom 10 of US presidents so far, he's closer to that than to the top 10.

 And,  two other asides.

First, I guess Krugman is OK with surrendering his civil liberties.

Second, we have two-plus years of encomia like this? Oy.

#WheelchairKen can't stand #AbortionBarbie calling him out for not sharing his wheelchair

That's in essence the faux outrage that the Greg Abbott campaign machine is ginning up over Wendy Davis' "Justice" ad, below:



Sadly, not just the non-liberal mainstream media, but the theoretically actually liberal portion of the national commentariat, like Mother Jones, has fallen for Abbott hook, line and sinker. 

I Tweeted about this back on Friday, when I  first read Abbott's faux outrage machine cranking up, and sent a copy of my Tweet Saturday to the twit from Mojo. Slightly edited, for full sentence type reading, it says:

WheelchairKen, (aka) @GregAbbott_TX (is) upset (at) being hinted at as #WheelchairKen by minions of pers(on) (his) minions call #AbortionBarbie.

Hence the header for this piece.

Reality?

Here is a good explainer. At the end, Davis staffer Joel Benenson offers a good explainer to Mojo twit Ben Dreyfuss, twit George Stephanopoulos, twit Donna Brazile, and the likes of unnamed twit Michael Lind:

“The ad’s not aimed at Donna Brazile. The ad is aimed at voters in Texas,” he said. “I’m confident that the ad is effective and working and is consistent with the strategy of our ads in this campaign that depicts Greg Abbott as an insider repeatedly siding with insiders and against average Texans.”

Exactly.

Or this, from another Texas blogger, which gets at the heart of the issue: Greg Abbott had a tree fall in him while jogging. He sued, got tens of millions of dinero, then, when he got into statewide office, supported so-called "tort reform" that pulled the economic ladder back up after himself.

Now, why did I say "unnamed twit Michael Lind"?

Because neoliberal (fancy speak for "fake liberal") Lind, who unlike Ben Dreyfuss is a native Texan, and brags about it to boot, pulled the same bullshit when Rick Perry was indicted. And, I hadn't kicked him enough yet over that.

Friend Perry has even more on the faux outrage.

Per my Tweet, when Wheelchair Ken formally disavows the Abortion Barbie meme that his minions have been mouthing for nine months, then and only then does he have even one scintilla of right to run the faux outrage machine. Until then, he can shut the fuck up.

Likewise, until faux liberals Ben Dreyfuss, Michael Lind, George Stephanopoulos, Donna Brazile and others get a clue, they can shut the fuck up, too.

It should be added that "Wheelchair Ken" has enver been a regular meme among either top staffers for or top donors t Davis. The reverse is not true with Abbott. In fact, one of the places where "Abortion Barbie" first took off was in the Orange County area, among some of those big out-of-state donors that Abbott denies having.

Update, Oct. 15: Hey, Wheelchair Ken? Davis' filibuster from last year is now, at least for now, at least a partial legal winner.

#Cardinals GM Mozeliak throws Taveras under the bus

Oscar Taveras

I don't know if top outfield prospect Oscar Taveras is going to be the greatest thing since Mike Trout, twice as good as Randal Grichuk, no better than him, or the biggest "phenom" since Clint Hurdle.

I do know that, as I have blogged before, I get tired of GM John Mozeliak saying one thing at one time about Taveras, especially his defense, then later claiming something else.

When he was called up for the first time, Cardinal general manager John Mozeliak chided people whom he called "junior GMs" for saying that Taveras should be playing center field rather than one of the corner outfield spots.

But ... as I noted in that blog post ...

That's just like what Mo himself said about Taveras, about 18 months ago.

Oscar Taveras, 20, is being developed as a center fielder, and on Thursday general manager John Mozeliak called him “one of the most prolific hitters I’ve seen in our organization probably since Albert Pujols.” Taveras won the Texas League’s equivalent of most valuable player award after batting .321 with 23 home runs, 94 RBIs and a organization-high .572 slugging percentage. In six games already this fall for the Dominican Winter League, Taveras has a .364 average with two homers. Projected initially as a right fielder, Taveras has improved enough for the team to think his athletic ability will translate to center.

The blog's content links to a Post-Dispatch story by Derrick Gould, so it's all legit. Well, actually, it links to P-D feed of Goold stories, not one individual one, but still.

And, now, Mo has gotten even worse:

Mozeliak said Taveras never has been viewed by the organization as anything but “an average defensive player.” Taveras probably has slipped from that modest plateau.

“When you look at what you’ve been seeing out of somewhat like a (Randal) Grichuk or (Jon) Jay, when they’re out there, there is a difference,” he said. “Given everything that’s going on right now, the manager (Mike Matheny) is choosing defense over offense.”

So, which is it, Mo?

Or do you want to confess that you made a major scouting/development estimate error in 2012?

Then, there's this piling on:

Regarding Taveras’ weight gain, Mozeliak allowed: “He looks like he’s put on some weight. It probably doesn’t help. Does 20 pounds help you?”

Well, if he has added 20 pounds, are you just noticing this now? It's not like he swallowed 3 months' worth of Homer Simpson's donuts overnight, is it?

And, if this is Mo's way of "sending a message," it seems pretty douchy to be doing it, in public, in the middle of the postseason.

Also, this would be the same Taveras who just tied Game 2 with a pinch-hit homer.

I guess we can add this to the douchyness of how Mo and Mike Matheny handled Shelby Miller in last year's playoffs. I'm still not sure which one is more to blame.

The longer his tenure, the more and more Mo, not just Matheny, drops off in my eyes.

Even if Mo did make a general comment about Taveras' conditioning when he was called up, I don't recall a specific "20 pounds" crack. And, to look at their post-season opponent right now, did Brian Sabean make a crack like that about Pablo Sandoval in 2012?

I also find it, er, interesting, that the Post-Dispatch has this story in its pages not at all, at least not on its website.

Read more here: http://www.bnd.com/2014/10/12/3451473_mozeliak-expresses-frustration.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Well

Read more here: http://www.bnd.com/2014/10/12/3451473_mozeliak-expresses-frustration.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

#Wingnuts: Meet #GregAbbott - money waster in chief (regularly updated)

Now that we progressive types have said "adios, mofo" to El Jefe Mofo Rick Perry, speculation has begun about how Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who has the definite inside track to replace Perry, will be better, worse or just different than Gov. Coyote Chaser.

(Unfortunately, we're learning that both are equally neck deep in crony capitalism with CPRIT, Texas Enterprise Fund, etc. More 

Well, we don't have to speculate too much. Mother Jones reminds us that the love child of Greg Abbott's war on any legislation connected with Barack Obama is the guy who guarantees Tea Partiers won't unite around Rick Perry — Ted Cruz. (For non-Texans unaware of it, Cruz used to be Abbott's solicitor general.)

The nut graf, for economic conservative poseurs like Abbott and their duped followers, is the last in the piece:

Abbott's anti-Washington record has been good for his profile, but it hasn't done much for Texas. He has won just 4 of those 27 cases outright (in a handful of other cases he dropped the suit after the circumstances changed), and the Associated Press calculated that his losing battles had cost the state $2.8 million. Which brings us to the great irony of his career. When Abbott left the Texas Supreme Court to run for attorney general in 2002, Abbott's main critique of his opponent, then-Austin mayor and former trial lawyer Kirk Watson, was a familiar one. You guessed it—frivolous lawsuits.

Bingo. That's probably an undercount, if anything.

And, it's only going to get worse.

I assume Texas redistricting will again get the state hauled into court, this time over Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act. And, unless Johnny Reb Roberts and a majority of the Nine in Black give an even more egregious reading of Section 3 than they did of Section 5, Abbott, the state of Texas, and the taxpayers of Texas — wingnut and sane alike — will lose, lose, lose.

By the time Abbott is presumably elected, that meter will surely be past the $4 million mark.

And, given that his is how Abbott perceives his job as AG:

During his tenure as Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott has developed a bit of a routine: "I go into the office," he told a GOP audience in San Angelo in Februrary, "I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home." It's a line he uses in virtually every speech he gives and it has the benefit of being basically true.

And, this is how nutbar-principled he is on the ebil federal government in general:

Abbott's opposition to any form of federal control is so fierce he even went to court to argue that Texas cities should not be compelled to provide wheelchair access because he believed the Americans With Disabilities Act was unconstitutional—despite the fact that Abbott himself has been paralyzed from the waist down since 1984, when he was struck by a falling tree.

Any liberal types who think he'll be any more open to Obamacare-based expansion of Medicaid than Tricky Ricky was are deluding themselves.

Plus, with him as gov and fair-haired Ted still in the Senate (especially if a wingnut can upset John Cornyn in the Senate primary then win the general), Tea Party-types will work to build a real Texas GOP power base.

And waste even more money over frivolous lawsuits.

And, over workplace non-productivity from uninsured employees.

Update, July 16: Meanwhile, Abbott wants to be, by Tea Party lights, an even bigger money-waster while promising more money savings. Off the Kuff has the details on the start of what sounds like, so far, a Poppy Bush candidacy. The Texas Observer has more.

It sounds like he's already looking past the primary to the general election. Expect Tom Pauken to pick up on these issues, but how much traction will he get with Tea Partiers, let alone Texas media?

Update, July 28: And, Abbott's lost another one! This is his suit over the EPA taking over TCEQ's pollution permitting because the state simply refused to do any real regulating. This was lost at the D.C. Court of Appeals, and there's no chance SCOTUS will even want to hear it, let alone reverse. And yet, Texas' Head.Legal.Moron is talking about appealing.

Here's comment:

Bryan Shaw, chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, who has fiercely opposed the EPA’s rules, said it was ”remarkable” that the courts have repeatedly denied the state’s appeals. 

In response to the latest Circuit Court decision, Shaw issued a statement that claimed that ”the EPA has effectively re-written the Clean Air Act to impose its new standards, imposed severely restrictive timelines on the states to implement its new requirements, and then twisted the act to immediately impose its agenda on Texas.” 

No, what's "remarkable" is that you're dumb enough to believe this was winnable. And, the only re-writing has been done by your agency.

My question is, how much do the likes of Abbott and Shaw believe their own press clippings, or rather, their own lawsuits, and how much, inside themselves, do they admit they're making stuff up?

Update, Sept. 5: Federal appeals court in San Antonio confirms Abbott wasted more money over Texas Senate redistricting.

Update, Nov. 11: He's not just the state's chief money-waster, he's now a water cheat! 

Update, June 24, 2014: He's now lost to the EPA on greenhouse gas regulations, too. 

Update, Oct. 11, 2014: Per the mix of crony capitalism mentioned in parentheses plus general money wasting, Abbott sure has a lot of "friends" in white-shoe law firms.