Rebel Texas Democrats to Hold Conference

Among all your quote sources, scrat, I'm still waiting to see that one from Austin. Why aren't you answering that? Don't you have one?

PD - on another forum exists a contributor who can never allow himself to be wrong. And quite often, although he knows little about a subject, he will continue to pick at it long after others have left or moved on.

Could this be he?

Walter, thanks. Of course there are differences, and they exist here. My family of lawyers tells me there are differences between rules, regulations, law and command. If you're ever looking for a bridge game, give me a call. In bridge there are rules but no laws.

so sorry to be missing all this..........I'll catch up later. It was moving day today and I have to get in bath and go to bed now. You guys carry on without me. I'll catch up later.

The holdout is over, and, surprisingly to the Repubs, the union remains intact.

You know, I think this was a particularly interesting event. What the dems did was quite light-hearted and humorous - a sort of Huck Finn strategy - and it put the pettiness, extremism and mouth-frothing lust for power of the opposition in an appropriate light. I hope dems down there take note. One of Clinton's great assets was his ability to convey that his sense of humor was always present along with his beliefs. The great figures of history, at least those I put in that category (small sample - Lincoln, Voltaire, Socrates, Einstein, Churchill) display a balance of humor, intellect, and principle. The scary guys, the totalitarian or extremist types (like Casesar, Napoleon, Savonarola, McCarthy, Nixon, Osama) all demonstrate an obsessive and even paranoid seriousness.

One could argue that people such as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh gain an audience greatly because they temper their screeds with what passes for humor (with a dismally lowbrow and hate-loving audience, I admit).

Great points, Blatham. You've nailed it. Of course, Limbaugh's and Coulter's humor is always at someone else's expense (unlike Clinton, a noblesse oblige-er if there ever was one) who did the well-educated, well-brought-up thing of being self-deprecating. The rightwingers are SO damn insecure that they associate self-deprecation with weakness, getting the whole thing backwards and falling ever deeper into the hole. How many are dumb enough to slide down there with them??

Tartarin

Yes, their humor is out of malice. One can imagine a Limbaugh audience reading Trillin or Keillor or Doonesbury with almost no grasp at all of what is going on.

They do associate self-deprecation with weakness...isn't that odd.

I've noticed it here in A2K. Post something which says, Aw gee, what a goof I was, and someone almost immediately says something like, You're always a goof! It's part of the culture of the right and it's pure defensiveness. This is why I yearn to understand, from a psychosocial standpoint, the precise basis for the defensiveness. Because everything the Republicans have been doing (albeit aggressively) post-Reagan has been knee-jerk defensiveness, I'm almost sure. If we understood what ailed them, we could either help them commit suicide quicker or turn the situation around. (I know it's hard to go along with at this point, but I do think they're on a suicide run -- just more likely to take us all with them if we don't stop it.)

I damn near drove up to Ardmore OK with some fresh, hot Texas BBQ for those Dems... What they've done with respect to Texas politics is not to be sniffed at; but I think there've been national reverberations which amount to a huge chunk of protein (BBQ?) for most liberals.

Here's Josh Marshall's take:



If anyone wants the link just ask.

Now here's my take:

When we have illegal immigrants being smuggled across the Texas border by the truckload, and neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the (Texas) Department of Public Safety knows about it until they fry in the heat, how is it that the illustrious state troopers of the great state of Texas even have time to con the Feds into looking for a politician's plane?

My tax dollars pay that trooper's salary.

I want to know who he is, and I want his employment terminated.

I'm with you, PDiddie. As I remarked above, I think a lot of people have been energized by what's happened, and if we could expend some of that energy DEMANDING the trooper's resignation, INSISTING on seeing a transcript of the call, NAILING DeLay to the mast for what he did, we'd be helping the cause considerably.

Several times in my Austin neighborhood, we had to call the police for one serious reason or another and they would take the most incredible amount of time to turn up -- and sometimes didn't. Once when I got friendly with a detective (also a musician Scruggs'!), I asked him about it. What ARE you guys doing? Paperwork, he said. It's all paperwork and time sheets.

And political favors, no doubt.

blatham - The Dems broke the rules (if not the law; okay mj?) to block the Reps from doing what the rules allow, and what Dems have done in their place. You think that's a victory. I don't.

Had Republicans (or any party) done the same thing, I would hold the same position. I bet no one else here can honestly say that, because your position is that you approve of the outcome. My point is that I don't care about the outcome, I care about whether or not we can count on the process, and after this, we can do so less than we could before.

And this isn't a problem with the rules, it is a problem with the ethics of people who--when they don't like the rules--think it is okay to ignore them. (People like that come in all political flavors, but we now know where to find a whole pack of them; in Texas.)

The Texas democrats' actions were legal. I find comments about ethics amusing, since what the republicans wanted to do was change a redistricting map that had been drawn up perfectly legally and accepted in 2001, with no legal or ethical reason for change except for Delay to change the map in order to get more republicans in. One suggested change is for a district 3 city blocks wide and a hundred or so miles long. Another calls for a district running about 300 miles down to the Texas border.

Here is a link to redistricting actions in Texas in 2001, complete with references to suits brought, and final decisions. It contains ethnic and demographic breakdowns as per latest census (which is the way it's supposed to be), and was two years ago, with mandated updates every ten years according to census counts. It also spells out the judges who signed onto this map.

Legally and ethically, the republicans were bound to honor this, barring great changes in stipulated areas.

Once again, hooray for the Texas democrats, who did not allow themselves to be bamboozled by a lawless crowd.



http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/research/redist/toc.htm

mamajuana,

The attempt to redistrict was not illegal, as far as I understand the law. What law are you citing?

Scrat,

I agree with you 100%. If someone dislikes a rule that shouldn't be a motive to ignore it.

I ask you how you think it applies to the US war on Iraq, when the outcome of the UN vote seemed unfavorable the UN was ignored and marginalized.

Craven:
If what the Democrat legislators of Texas did was in fact "illegal", then I know we are all confident that there are ample legal experts of the GOP persuasion in Texas to indict, charge, prosecute, and punish these scoff-laws to the full extent of the law. They can hardly plead innocence. If, on the other hand, there is no provision for such action as punishing these people, what's the problem?

Also, as a side-note (I realize this is somewhat "off topic", but I present it as a public service):

Your "quote", "Red meat is not bad for you, fuzzy green meat is bad for you," while clever sounding, is perhaps misleading. The practice of "aging" beef has largely been abandoned, except by the very best restaurants. Most steak lovers know the very best steak you can be served, was indeed "fuzzy" and "green" before being trimmed for preparation.

"The main reason for aging beef is to improve tenderness and flavor of the meat so that if properly cooked it will be more satisfying to the consumer. Proper aging of beef results in a combination of changes that many people appreciate.
While muscle is undergoing changes associated with tenderness, chemical breakdown of certain muscle and fat constituents occurs, resulting in a more intense flavor and aroma. In general, these changes in flavor and aroma are desirable to most consumers. However, undesirable flavors and aromas can develop during aging due mainly to the effects of microbial growth.
When processing aged beef quarters or wholesale cuts into retail cuts or for home freezer, certain precautions should be taken to ensure satisfaction by the customer. Dried or discolored surface areas should be carefully trimmed off. Any surface areas containing detectable growth of microorganisms (typically GREEN), as evidenced by slime formation or off-odor, should also be carefully trimmed off."

http://muextension.missouri.edu/explore/agguides/ansci/g02209.htm

MORAL: Appearances can be deceiving. The "fuzzy green" meat may be BETTER for you than its "red" brother, once you understand the REASONS for the process, the proper preparation procedure, and the result obtained.

Perhaps analogous to Texas Law? ...

mj - I'm not a big fan of gerrymandering. Districts should be drawn up based on county lines and left that way.

But as I just wrote, that is not (for me, at least) the point.

I would support the right to do what these Democrats did no matter which party did it. It is a type of action that has gone on in Texas politics over the years, not just now. If people truly wanted to stop it they would make laws with teeth in them for punishing those involved.

Agree with your wish to end gerrymandering, Scrat, though of course representation is based on counting heads, not square miles, and we don't elect one rep per county. It's not a problem I've given a whole lot of thought to (except the difficulty of drawing the lines), but here's my question: Let's imagine that in my state, the overall voting population is 54% Republican, 46% Democrat, and the rest third party. To what extent are those percentages represented in my state's delegation in DC? To what extent should they be?

I happen to live in a state, the constitution of which forbids the subdivision of counties for the purposes of representation. The thinking behind this was that the folks in a county had common interests to be represented. This remains forbidden by our constitution but on this the document is roundly ignored by Dems and Reps alike.

So, it seems a reasonable way to do it to me, and it matters not how many people live in county X. Give that county more representatives and another fewer if that's the way the census breaks, but I'm very much against intentionally drawing lines to pull together groups of this party or that ethnic group.

I'd rather lose while holding to my principles than win and lose them, and it saddens me profoundly to discover that is an alien concept to so many.

Scrat

As Delay said, "I'm the speaker. My job is to get more seats."

Note he did not say, "I'm the speaker. My job is to ensure that each district is as truly and fairly represented as can be ascertained."

As to rule violated...what rule? You can't leave the state?

As to rule violations generally... there are lots of examples of bad rules (say, police operational procedure rules in South Africa under apartheid) and lots of examples of bad laws. We all regularly violate both (eg, speeding laws, membership rules in online discussion groups). It is always a negotiation between principles and perceived consequences. You, driving three miles an hour over the speed limit, isn't terribly troublesome. What Delay tried is repugnant.

To what extent does the Texas Congressional delegation represent the voters of Texas as a whole?