February 16, 2010
December 27, 2009
December 26, 2009
December 14, 2009
The Tattlesnake – A Stake Deep in the Heart of GOP Texas Edition
Judging by this, Lone Star state Republicans may have much to fear in the future.
I’ve made plenty of fun of Texas and that breed of Texan that keeps electing crooks and nitwits like Tom DeLay and Junior-clone Rick Perry against their own best interests, but it seems things have gotten bad enough down there that even Houston, the nexus of Bush Oil Country, has elected a lesbian Democrat, former City Controller Annise Parker, as Mayor rather than face a corrupt and/or dumb Republican. (Albeit that Houston has been trending Dem for some years and the last mayor was a Democrat.) Although Parker has some past ties to the energy industry, her most recent non-political gig was running a bookstore and she is regarded as fairly liberal, at least by Texas standards.
It’s no secret the GOP has raped the state from one end to the other, giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations while cutting social safety-net programs to the bone, eviscerating the educational system, and putting workers at the mercy of employers – it was the neocon corporatist blueprint for what King Junior tried to do in Washington, but didn’t quite succeed at entirely. Now that the economy has gone all to hell, fed-up Texans are worse off than most of the nation, and they have no one to blame but the laissez-faire policies of the Republican Party.
Sure, the voting machines have been rigged and districts redrawn to keep the GOP in perpetual power, but even that may not be enough to underwrite the Republican Party’s future in Texas.
The Tattler’s prediction: Within ten years all the major state offices will be held by Democrats, as well as the two US Senate seats. Texas was, at one time, a populist state; I think it will be returning to those roots – who knows, maybe the great Jim Hightower will end up in office again, if he can stomach campaigning one more time.
Houston biggest US city to elect openly gay mayor
Monica Rhor, AP Writer
December 13, 2009HOUSTON – Houston became the largest U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor, with voters handing a solid victory to City Controller Annise Parker after a hotly contested runoff. [...]
Parker, 53, has never made a secret or an issue of her sexual orientation. But it became the focus of the race after anti-gay activists and conservative religious groups endorsed Locke and sent out mailers condemning Parker’s “homosexual behavior.”
Read the rest here.
“Anti-gay activists and conservative religious groups” couldn’t defeat an openly gay woman in TEXAS?! Oh, yes, the doom come soon for the GOP.
© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org
December 7, 2009
November 6, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Post-Election Portents and Predictions Edition
…And How the Big Media Speculators Got It Wrong Again
The usual Big Media Punchinellos were out in force the past few days, blaring and bleating the Beltway Conventional Wisdom that the Democratic Party’s loss of the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey are a sure referendum on Obama Administration policies. This is the sort of doomed facile reasoning found in the bottom of a Washington cocktail glass typical of Our Pundit Class who, from non-existent Iraq WMD to Fred Thompson’s popularity with voters, can never seem to fit the square peg in the round hole, pound though they might.
A brief review of the Dem candidates in VA and NJ clearly shows why progressives and like-minded independents didn’t bother to vote for Creigh Deeds in Virginia or Jon Corzine in New Jersey, and it had nothing to do with Obama. For various reasons explained below, they were both terrible candidates.
Creigh Deeds: In an era of change, Deeds was a shambling throwback, a dismal campaign clunker with four flat tires, who rejected Obama’s advice and help until it dawned on him in the final weeks he was going to lose in a landslide. He ran a miserably negative campaign, devoid of ideas, and presented his pap on toast so dry even peppy Dem loyalists fought to stay awake during his speeches. A Dem Blue Dog so blue he threatened to opt out of a public option should it become available to Virginians, he was nearly as conservative as his GOP opponent Bob McDonnell. Why leave the house to vote when the choice is between a Republican and a Dem who thinks like a Republican? Seen clearly, this was a referendum, and portent of the future, for Blue Dog Dems rather than President Obama.
Jon Corzine: The one-time ‘Garden State’ US Senator who was just bounced from the governor’s mansion is a Goldman Sachs Golden Boy who made piles of money on Wall Street and insists on spending it on vanity campaigns. Why he doesn’t just buy a new summer home or sumptuous overpriced yacht instead of squadering his fortune to impose himself on our political process is beyond me, but Corzine has never shown much talent for governing once elected, and what few things he has accomplished were always moderate to the point of invisibility. Jon is the kind of drab Dudley Do-Nothing the Democratic Party needs to send packing, if they expect to keep the majority in the future. Again, the portentiousness of Corzine’s defeat was not his affiliation with Obama’s policies, but the yellow line up the middle of his back from avoiding tenaciously either the right or left lane. He will not be missed, at least by this writer.
The point? Neither of them were progressives and didn’t stir independents or liberal Dems to go out and vote for them.
And now to stare into the crystal – but not Kristol – ball for some predictions on the Republican winners of those two elections:
Comments Off
Or, ‘The Old Man and the She-Devil’