Texas Progressives talk redistricting, hypocrisy, more

Off the Kuff is all over the quorum break.

A state judge has blocked R.F. O'Rourke from aiding state House Dems in the quorum break.

State Rep. James Talarico is inching closer to a U.S. Senate run. Joe Rogan (no really) wants him to run for president.

Stop me if you've heard this before: Republicans nominating Ken Paxton for the Senate instead of renominating John Cornyn allegedly could be a bridge too far.

RIP James Lovell.

Brains, about 3/5 the way down his Sunday funnies for Aug. 3, sadly has a Marcionite view of the Old Testament/Tanakh, Yahweh and Israelite religion. Of course, he's not alone, when a critical biblical scholar like Bart Ehrman does the same.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project reported on well-attended quick response protest at John Cornyn’s Houston office, after Cornyn called for on FBI to abduct Texas State Reps. who rightly left Texas. The action was called by the John Cornyn Houston Office Protest, which has been weekly for well-over 8 years at corner of Memorial & Detering.  

Texas Monthly explains what Chili's "Booth Boots" are about.  

The Barbed Wire reviews the non-border-security spending that Greg Abbott's "Operation Lone Star" enabled.  

Your Local Epidemiologist tries again to make sense of current vaccination policy. 

 Pete vonder Haar compares the future that we were promised to the future we actually got.  

Law Dork finds another DOJ-manufactured lawsuit aimed at ending in-state tuition for undocumented students. 

The Current found what may be the most epic "leopards eating people's faces" example ever.

The Quorum Report shows how Greg Abbott's thinking about separation of powers has changed since he was Attorney General.

Good on McKinney going ahead with a passenger airport terminal

I thought, after McKinney voters rejected a 2023 bond issue, this would be dead.

But, the city has enough money without going through a bond to start work on a commercial terminal, in part through state budget funding and a TxDOT grant, per this story of the airport's history. It's too bad the 2023 Lege hadn't funded this; it would already be open by now.

I'm not ignoring or dissing questions about environmental impacts.

I am saying that the greater Metromess could use a third airport. Now, what airlines are going out there? I think the FAA should put both American and Southwest at the back of the bus on gate requests. I expect UnitedContinental or whatever the hell it's called would love to fly from here to Houston and Denver, two of its hubs. 

I wrote more about that in the run-up to the 2023 bond election, here. One pullout:

Presumably, given Southwest's near monopoly at Love, and American's at D/FW, the FAA would have Delta and United Continental first in line for gate slots. With that, almost all United flights would go either to its big hub at Houston Bush, and anywhere else from there, or secondarily to its Denver hub, with anywhere in the Western states from there. (A few nonstops would go to Chicago.) Delta, of course, would send all sorts of flights to its massive hub in Atlanta (cue old joke) and probably a few to its secondary hub in Salt Lake City. Starter (in the past decade) airlines might get a gate or two. And McKinney Mayor George Fuller says he can't name names, but, the interest is there. His assistant city manager says the same. 

Gavin Newsom: What's wrong with Democraps in a nutshell

I'm not talking about his neoliberalism, and things like pseudoenvironmentalism that go along with that. Those are givens when you talk about "what's wrong with Democraps," as are things like Palestinian statehood and all related issues, military Keynesianism, etc.

No, there's something else generally wrong with national Democraps.

And, that is that, at some point, they'll always have a lack of balls.

Like Newsom on mid-decade redistricting. 

Texas called its special session more than a week ago, but here he is earlier this week, begging Trump to stop with the redistricting.

From the way he talks, I remain unconvinced that he'll actually order the Cal Legislature to do a mid-decade redistricting there.

Related to that, he's already backed off his claim that, the way the enabling rules are set for California's non-partisan redistricting commission, he and the Cal Lege could do a mid-decade redistricting without any additional approval.

Ballless.

Or clueless, if he misread the statute.

That said, they're not mutually exclusive.

Meanwhile, per Capital and Main, de facto segregation in California public schools is getting worse. And, it says that on magnet and charter schools, there are things the state could do to reverse that. But, obviously, hasn't.

Since she is also from California, remember that if Kamala is a Zionist Cop runs for prez again, too. 

Will Trump actually Schedule III marijuana?

Or will he just blather about it, per a news story Monday?

The first important takeaway is that Dementia Joe's Drug Enforcement Administration started talking about that idea in 2024, but nothing further happened. Had Kamala is a Zionist Cop Harris promised to follow through, maybe, just maybe, she would have been elected.

Second, if the disapproving take of the incel-like Charlie Kirk, at Politico, represents a fair amount of MAGAts, this has potential to further allegedly split the Trumptard base beyond the Epstein Files. Note that "allegedly"; I'm not a BlueAnon who believes unicorns are real. 

Here's Trump's recent background, if that means anything from either his weathervane, flighty personality or from his own growing dementia.

Ahead of the 2024 elections, Trump said he would vote yes on a Florida amendment that would legalize marijuana throughout the state. Florida voters did not approve the amendment. 

“As I have previously stated, I believe it is time to end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We must also implement smart regulations, while providing access for adults, to safe, tested product.” 

In the post, he indicated he would look into the medical uses of marijuana and the benefits of reducing its classification to Schedule III.

There you are. 

Marijuana is currently Schedule I-listed, along with heroin et al, LSD and ecstasy. LSD could arguably itself be knocked down to at least Schedule II and ecstasy to Schedule III. (Many non-heroin opioids are in Schedule II, as are amphetamines.)

Ketamine is among Schedule III drugs. Your benzos are generally Schedule IV, and arguably should be moved UP to Schedule III. 

For details, not just LSD and ecstasy, but many other hallucinogenic drugs like peyote, psilocybin and MDA are in Schedule I, as are heroin-derived drugs, and "designer" stimulants, per Wiki's complete list.

Beyond amphetamines not in Schedule I, others of them, barbiturates, cocaine, and opioids not in Schedule I are in Schedule II, per Wiki.

This is why rescheduling for marijuana needs to take it all the way down to Schedule III. It's a different mindset on federal "criminality" at that point. Also, established banks in states that have legal recreational marijuana will treat the industry differently. See also Wiki on the Controlled Substances Act.

Top blogging of July

As is normal (and I'm a few days late, due to catching up with life after vacationing and other things), these posts were not necessarily written IN July, they were just the most-read in the month.

Drumroll, as we count backwards ...

No. 10 is actually from Aug. 1, my writing about the latest climate news, that the US Southwest's drought will likely last the rest of this century. 

In the No. 9 slot, I said Trump was actually right about California's high-speed rail. 

At No. 8, from back in March, I called out "The Resistance 2.0" for wanting to relitigate Russiagate. Some things never get old. 

At No. 7? I heavily snarked on one of the most sappy bits of poetry from the fundagelical world with my snappy hot take on "Footprints in the Sand" — talking about "The REAL Footprints in the Sand." 

No. 6? For whatever reason, an April installment of the Texas Progressives weekly roundup was trending. 

No. 5? It's fun calling out a subreddit and duopoly tribalism at the same time, as when I talked about "Fuck r/NationalPark for a duopoly tribalist ban." 

No. 4 goes back to May about how none of the three Democrats on the Supreme Court are serious environmentalists.

No. 3 comes from April and looked north of the border. Yes, per my question, Canada's Liberals could win again. That said, the win got nothing more than a nice, polite Canadian version of Canadian nationalism from the left hand of the duopoly, along with the disintegration of the NDP meaning that yes, for now at least, Canada really is like the US governed by a duopoly. (Sit down PQ.)

No. 2 is from June and another Texas Progressives roundup, this one wrapping up the Texas Lege regular session. 

And the top post?

From July, "A Drying Rio Grande Won't Fix Itself." And this is even more true in light of No. 10.  (I had originally typed "Dying" instead of "Drying," and that's not totally inaccurate.

GOP wingnuts want a conservative version of Californicating Texas

The Monthly talks about how Tex-ass wingnuts want to pull off a conservative version of Californicating the state. A poster child is SB 8 from two years ago, which allowed private citizens to file lawsuits in abortion-related issues.

Unknown to me until reading that story? The whole idea, though of course with different targets, originated in California far earlier. For example, those carcinogen worries you see on so many products? Required in California — and enforceable by citizen lawsuit. It's easier for companies to print one version of such labels nationwide. Here's the skinny.

If you’ve ever visited the great state of California, you may have experienced that cumulative effect, as well as some alarm at finding out that nearly everything there will give you cancer. Any consumer product or location there that contains any level of a carcinogen, from coffee machines to Disneyland, is required by a 1986 law to display a warning about its potential to cause cancer and birth defects. Because makers of consumer products will invariably want to sell those products in California, many items sold outside the state also contain the warning. And because testing to determine the levels of carcinogens is so expensive, manufacturers may slap warnings on products that don’t contain carcinogens at all, lest they be hit by lawsuits later. Those lawsuits can be brought by enterprising members of the public, just as with SB 8.

Never knew that before.

And beyond wingnut political purity, this stuff has also come to Tex-ass:

There’s a bipartisan consensus that Americans eat like garbage, and that ultra-processed food is at least partly to blame. But Senate Bill 25 is notable for its mechanism of correcting the national appetite. It presents a list of 44 ingredients or categories of ingredients, from dyes to bleached flour, many of which are commonly included in products Texans buy at grocery stores and which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration already regulates. Any product made with one of those 44 elements—pancake mix, tortilla chips, granola bars—now must include a warning on its packaging that it “contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union or the United Kingdom.”

Interesting indeed. (And also highly hypocritical, per the story.)

Here's the bill. It's the "physical education in schools" bill; the food stuff comes later, about halfway down. Before that, it has many other things, like an elective high school course, and a required college course, on food and nutrition. Sounds good, right? But with wingnut promoting Brainworm Bobby's rants about seed oils, maybe it's not.