Texas Progressives talk this and that

SocraticGadfly talks about GOP whackadoodles in the SBOE District 12 andHouse District 68 primaries.

The border trumps vouchers in GOP primaries, the Trib says, and I can attest.

Speaking of, Katrina "Bullets" Pierson makes, but does not top, Forrest Wilder's list of the most nutbar primary candidates.

The Dallas Fed says Texas job growth will slow down in 2024. Well, it actually slowed down in the second half of 2023. Does it mean it will slow down more, or were they asleep at the switch the last six months?

The Texas GOP executive committee passed a nothingburger resolution to ban antisemites from the party; it's a nothingburger because it doesn't name names like Former Fetus Forever Fuckwad Jonathan Stickland.

Travel bans vs shield laws on abortion and more will surely wind up at the Supreme Court.

Meat Austin Riley, fortunate enough to barely avoid becoming the Hill Country's Tim Treadwell.

Off the Kuff has one word for the latest defense motion in the Ken Paxton securities fraud trial.

Allegedly librul Texas municipal leaders hate Palestinians.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said the people of Eagle Pass want Greg Abbott & DPS out. 

The Eyewall explains the complex relationship between El Niño and California rain. 

Maria Hernandez Pinto writes that harsh border controls actually jeopardize the safety of U.S. citizens, mostly Black and brown border residents. 

Mean Green Cougar Red contemplates the extreme concentration of college football fandom among a handful of programs.

The TSTA Blog declares Greg Abbott a disaster for education.

Houstonia has grim news about the upcoming crawfish season.

Alt-history: Legitimate Monmouth, no Glorious Revolution

By Monmouth, I'm talking about the 1st Duke of Monmouth, aka James Scott, aka the oldest bastard of England and Scotland's (no UK then, remember!) King Charles II.

I was inspired to this by a book I just read on Stuart England (again, just England, so doesn't start until 1603, and ends 1689, with William fully grasping the kingship).

The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689 by Jonathan Healey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A little bit dense, but not unduly so, and informative throughout. For me, it was most so on the period from the Second Civil War of 1648 through the end of the Protectorate.

I had not realized how, in 1648, much of Parliament was still willing to treat with Charles and on lenient terms.

On the Protectorate, I knew the basics: Rump Parliament, Charles' execution, Cromwell off to Ireland to become a four-letter word, Cromwell scuffing with various Parliaments, then son Richard unable to hold power. But the details of the different Parliamentary arrangements at different times in the Protectorate? How Cromwell was often more Independent, less Puritan, on the degree of religious tolerance he was ready to show? That and more was new.

So were some of the fine details of William vis a vis James II/VII. And, that should be enough without spoiling anything.

View all my reviews

The biggie against legitimizing him is that Charles never married Lucy Walter, thogh Monmouth pushed claims there had been a secret marriage on his father's deathbed, shortly before proclaiming the standard of revolt against his uncle, James II/VII, and claiming the kingship shortly thereafter.

Two questions, with some background first.

First, Charles had earlier sent his brother into exile, when, several years after the Treaty of Dover, Charles' new kindness to Catholics got enough backlash by James trying to push it more than Charles, that Charles sent him out of the country for his own safety if nothing else. A few years after that, when Charles was in a severe illness that looked like it might cause long term incapacitation, or even be fatal, James returned from the Continent without authorization. And made a muck of things while trying to run a quasi-regency. When Charles recovered, both over the muck and over James not asking permission to return first, he exiled him again. This is all tied to the Exclusion Crisis earlier, and the Test Act and the Popish Plot, which is when James was sent abroad.

Did Charles think at that point about making a claim to secret marriage? Walter was dead and couldn't deny it, and Charles had long ago basically told Queen Maria Braganza straight up that his mistresses came first. The only other thing Charles needed was a priest who would have been with him at this time of exile and willing to perjure himself by swearing he'd performed the marriage.

Option B? Could Charles have made a deal with Parliament to legitimize Monmouth anyway? (Some other countries allows such legitimization, or, in the case of Tsarist Russia, asked fewer questions about bloodlines.) Parliament probably would have attached several conditions, such as further expanding the Test Act. With that, I think it would have been possible.

This would have avoided the whole Glorious Revolution, for better and for worse.

Monmouth had legitimate issue, and his eldest son, 1st Earl Dalkeith, also did.

That said, there were others to oppose this, starting with Dutch Stadtholder William and wife Mary, who stood to be the biggest losers.

Would Parliament become more quasi-democratic more quickly, or more slowly, is one question.

And, without the later Hanoverian succession, would the United Kingdom (I assume that still happens, in part for part of the reasons it did in reality, for island unity against the Yorkists) gotten less entangled in Continental affairs?

Joe Biden vs Hillary, Trump Ben-Hur; Trikki Nikki on Dementia Don

This is going to be fun.

China Ben-Hur is special counsel Robert K. Hur. The WaPost reports that, among examples of what he saw as Biden's failing memory was that he couldn't remember the start and stop years of his own vice presidency.

"Hey, Barry, was that 2009?" Biden texts Dear Leader?

THIS is going to be really fun.

Hillary Clinton threw Joe Biden under the nursing home bus:

“I talked to people in the White House all the time, and you know, they know it’s an issue, but as I like to say, ‘look, it’s a legitimate issue,’” Clinton told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner earlier this week. “It’s a legitimate issue for [ex-President Donald] Trump who’s only three years younger, right? So it’s an issue.”

OK, now.

Meanwhile, Sleepy Joe is reportedly blaming Merrick Garland for that report getting out in the first place.

All of this only increases my concern that the MSM, librul version, and the MSM, Faux/wingnut version, isn't discussing the worry of either #DementiaJoe OR #DementiaDon carrying the nuclear football.

The AP says mixing up names is common. Common between living and dead people? And what about mixing up dates? Yeah, it tries to say that we'd forget when we put something in a box, but? If I were elected vice president of Merikkka, I think I'd remember when I started. Funny that Dr. Eric Lenze doesn't address that one. Also, the piece is bad neuroscience, relying on the old trope of your brain is like a computer, putting memories in files. And, even if it DID work that way, mixing up Sisi and AMLO? Yea, Abdel starts with an A, as does Andrés, but Sisi and Obrador? Not, and last-name addresses is what happens among world leaders, as in something that may be attributed to Lenze at the AP piece, or may just be a reporter's explainer that comes close to editorializing, talking about mixing up Macron and Mitterand. Same last name initial AND same country. Not different last initials AND different countries.

Heather Cox Richardson says that since Joe McCarthy days, Republicans have used smears to torpedo Democrats. Is this like Pelosi saying that Russians are behind pro-Palestinian protests?

That all said, Hur DID clerk for both Kozinski at the appeals court level and a year later for Renchburg I mean Rehnquist. And, many Republicans (tho none currently holding any federal positions) also think Hur was over the top.

Meanwhile, a Biden aide supposedly told Arab-Americans he had some regrets about Gaza. Biden's dementia will give him the old presidential "plausible deniability" he ever said that. And, the way I read the opening paragraph, it's Jon Finer expressing his own belief, not Hasbara Joe's, that he has "no confidence" Israel was willing to take "meaningful steps" to Palestinian statehood. Even via backdoor and on the QT, Biden, unlike Obama, would never say that.

Meanwhile, Trikki Nikki Haley is trolling Trump on the age and memory issue with mobile billboards in South Carolina.

And, why not? He had his own ginormous word salad at the NRA convention.

Meanwhile, part 2, Just Security engages in its own spinning, non-dementia division, on the Hur report.

Climate crisis: One straight year over 1.5C

THAT is the bigger reality than just a record-setting January.

Yes, the neoliberal wing of climate change scientists, or climate change Obamiacs as I call them, the Michael Manns and Katharine Hayhoes, will downplay the seriousness of this. Hayhoe probably as an evangelical Christian will do so for that reason alone; survey says, no joking about the phrase, that secularists are FAR more likely to think that climate change is a very major issue than either fundagelical OR liberal-minded people not just of Christianity or any other world religion.

Before the January climate story, I already saw people spinning the record-setting 2023 as "well, maybe we'll hit 2C but no more than that," or words to that effect.

Reality? Per the likes of James Hansen, we've surely baked in 2.5C and almost surely 3C into what will wind up as the new stasis point. As I said in discussing that, and in saying that I would take Hansen over Mann any time on climate assessments, 4C by 2100 would not surprise me. Even 5C would not incredibly surprise me.

And, per it being referenced in Reuters? The Paris accords are Jell-O, and two people wanted that: Dear Leader Obama and Xi Jinping.

Meanwhile, other climate scientists warn that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is closer to a tipping point. That's the point where meltwater from the Arctic and Greenland could overwhelm the Gulf Stream at its northerly reaches and affect the climate of Western Europe. How much, we really don't know.

Even The Nation is worried about Genocide Joe (but not really), but the Pentagon is!

The Nation, home of virulent duopoly upholders and third-party haters such as John Nichols? Yes.

Indeed, it is Green Party hater Nichols himself who wrote earlier this week, with this headline:

"Biden Can No Longer Avoid Questions About His Fitness For A Second Term." (Somebody at The Nation doesn't know AP style for headers, as in reality, every word after "Biden" should be in lowercase, but that's another story.)

John-Boy is writing about the Biden classified documents special counsel report where counsel Robert Hur said, among other things, that Biden is:

"(A)n elderly man with a poor memory."

He is, even if Biden got indignant. (Cue Irish Alzheimer's issues.)

And, in the act of getting indignant, proved Hur right:

Biden insisted "my memory is fine" — and then referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi as the president of Mexico when talking about the war in Gaza. Earlier in the week, the president made similar gaffes, referring to Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, instead of French President Emmanuel Macron, and the late Helmut Kohl instead of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Oy. At least both Sisi and actual Mexican president AMLO are still alive.

Elsewhere, Dear Leader-era White House counsel Dan Pfeiffer called it a "partisan hit job" and Kamala Is A Cop said it was inaccurate. (She doesn't even have the excuse of being elderly and with a poor memory for her flubs.)

Contra Jeet Heer, not even Taylor Swift may be able to save him.

The Dan Pfeiffers of the world who say it was partisan, gratuitous and more are right. 

The Kamala Harrises who say it's inaccurate are wrong, even before Alzeimer's Joe proved them wrong. Back to Nichols:

In reality, the debate about Biden’s age was a stubborn problem before Hur released the report, in which he wrote, “We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” but then damningly described the president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and asserted that, during interviews with the special counsel, Biden had failed to remember the dates of his tenure as vice president and, most painfully, couldn’t recall when his beloved son Beau had died. Biden pointedly, and at times emotionally, rejected Hur’s claims, but they reinforced an impression that has been a lingering challenge for the president.

That's the bottom lime. Hur made it worse, arguably, with a semi-condescending backhanded politeness.

That said, let's not give Nichols too many kudos. He says:

But Biden has always been known for his gaffes.

And then goes into spin mode about the Sisi comment. And, he then doesn't ask the bottom-line question:

Are these gaffes more frequent now?

And, speaking of Jeet, he calls out Biden for abortion ambivalence. That's no gaffe and never has been.

That said, if Nichols and Heer were really worried about Biden, they'd be apoplectic over some of the "swing states" polling numbers that Counterpunch's Jeff St. Clair presented in yesterday's Roaming Charges.

Don't worry, though, Blue Anon. The Nation won't give Jill Stein, Cornel West or anybody even further to the left the time of day, and will loyally sheepdog this fall.

And, on Nichols? It's not generic Green/leftist hating. I called him out four years ago for "licking Biden's green taint."

And, if all of the above REALLY wanted to worry along duopoly lines, they'd read Ken Klippenstein at the Intercept. The Pentagon is worried about older elected officials in general, though not mentioning any names in a story from last September. There is this:

The U.S.’s current leadership is not only the oldest in history, but also the number of older people in Congress has grown dramatically in recent years. In 1981, only 4 percent of Congress was over the age of 70. By 2022, that number had spiked to 23 percent. In 2017, Vox reported that a pharmacist had filled Alzheimer’s prescriptions for multiple members of Congress. 

With little incentive for an elected official to disclose such an illness, it is difficult to know just how pervasive the problem is. Feinstein’s retinue of staffers have for years sought to conceal her decline, having established a system to prevent her from walking the halls of Congress alone and risk having an unsupervised interaction with a reporter.

That's even as Ken talks about Ms. Russiagate, Nancy Pelosi, announcing she was going to run again.

The late Dianne Feinstein and the still alive Mitch McConnell, as part of the "Gang of Eight," did ineed have access to classified material from the CIA, and presumably at times from the NSA as well.

But, Ken doesn't update for ... possibly Dementia Joe.

Various forms of dementia, whether Alzheimer's, Lewy body, or atherosclerotic or arteriosclerotic (types of vascular), can do more than affect memory and intellect. We're not stereotypical Vulcans, androids or whatever; our intellect includes our emotions, per David Hume et al.

Let us remember that it's Joe Biden who can get fixated in anger against the Houthis not "submitting" to him and say it's time to bomb them again. It's Joe Biden who can get fixated in anger when Hamas proposes an "unacceptable" truce.

But, the intellect is also involved, and not just memory. It's Joe Biden who may not be able to cipher through Israeli lies about the UNRWA.

Finally, since Klippenstein went Russiagate, if you will, with Pelosi, and we're in Cold War 2.0 with Russia and China, and backing Ukraine in a proxy war?

Joe Biden controls the nuclear "football." What if, as humongously unlikely as it is, Vladimir Putin launched a nuclear first strike and Biden couldn't remember the US codes? Or, back to emotions plus intellect, without bad memory. What if a new version of an Able Archer happened and Biden refused to accept NSA staffers saying there was an error situation of some sort?

This should scare the shit out of people.

And, ditto for the degree Donald Trump faces the same concerns. And, yes, Dementia Don looks more and more real, too. (Waiting for Republicans or conservative media to go John Nichols and say "Trump has always done this.")

And, the scariness of a second-term Biden should be held just as true of a second-term Trump.

America as failed state: Colorado v Trump

Caught snatches of the live argumentation in front of the Supreme Court on NPR. Here's one of the stories from Thursday. SCOTUSBlog has more.

A few thoughts, with an intro before that.

First, not only poor countries "out there" can be failed states, i.e. Afghanistan. The tail end of Weimar Germany was quite arguably a failed state even before Hitler took the oath of office as chancellor.

Second and related? If not a failed state, the USofA, aka Merikkka, is a failing state. Period and end of story, especially to backers of both duopoly parties.

OK, to the story itself.

First, this is obviously a reason to get rid of the electoral college. That's what, reason No. 412 or something?

Second, this is a good reason to move beyond that and officially make the election for president a national, not a "federal," election. If that meant different rules on absentee ballots, etc., than currently more restrictive states, so be it. Arguments by various justices in the SCOTUSBlog piece underscore that.

Third, it's also a good argument to, if possible, truly overhaul our government into a parliamentary system. It's harder to do the Hillary Clinton attempt at controlled opposition when a prime ministerial candidate is already leader of the opposition and depends on coming to power on nationwide vote for MPs. Arguments by various justices in the SCOTUSBlog piece underscore that, too.

That said?

A. Parliamentary systems are no guarantee against becoming a failed or failing nation. On the former, see Weimer Germany, above. On the latter, see post-Brexit Britain. 

B. The mechanics are partly at issue. Westminster-type systems with first past the post single-member districts tend to squeeze out third parties. Systems that are purely proportional and don't have modern Germany's 5 percent hurdle let in all the nutters.

Fourth, and related, we'll likely have more and more Russiagate-type bullshit claims in the future. After all, the NYT tried to revive it for the 2022 midterms. Note also former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, not content with anti-Republican smears, claiming that Russia and president Vladimir Putin are behind pro-Palestinian protestors. (Code Pink and founder Medea Benjamin recently confronted her on this.)

Fifth, it's funny how people can always shape shift on federalism = states as "laboratory of democracy" when their ox is being gored. That includes, per the top link, a possible majority of the black-robed Kourt Klan Konklave thinking Colorado can't do what it did.

As for the black-robed KKK trying to reason its way to keeping Trumpy safe?

The only reason I would agree is "ripeness" grounds. Trump hasn't been directly charged with insurrection, or aiding and abetting. Blame Jack Smith, #BlueAnon. Trump's attorney, Jonathan Miller, tried to put a spin on this by differentiating between an election and actually serving. (Not that he thinks Trump should be disqualified should he be re-elected, of course.)

Otherwise? John Roberts et al seem to have a semi-novel interpretation of the 14th Amendment being written to rein in state powers.

If he, Slammin Sammy Alito et al are worried about different states reaching different conclusions, see the top of this piece. Colorado's attorney, Jason Murray, addressed much of his objections, and his fellow travelers, per SCOTUSBlog. Besides, there's that old Gorsuch ruling.

I will actually credit Alito for discussing what all might count as "insurrection." This gets much deeper, really, and beyond both duopoly parties, to things like undeclared wars and "cold wars."

There's also the issue of general deference to political parties on primary election ballots vs general election ballots. That said, given that Trump's going to win, it would be stupid to put him on a GOP primary ballot, if the Colorado plaintiffs are right about the 14th Amendment in general.

Sixth, doesn't this ultimately show what a clusterfuck the Constitution of the United States is? And, that gets us back to America as failed state.