The Eleventy Billionth Blog

So, About Yesterday

One time, I baked muffins*. I mean, I've baked muffins plenty of times, but this one particular time, I baked one and opted to just dump everything in the bowl, skipping the crucial step of mixing the dry ingredients together first, then adding the wet ingredients.

What I got instead is misshapen hockey pucks. 

I bring this up because baking muffins is an easy analogy for the political process. Primaries seem unnecessary and boring, but in reality, if you don't take part, you end up with homicidal hockey puck with good hair. 

I may have mixed my metaphors there. But you get my drift.

So yesterday, people voted in the primaries. Some voted strategically, opting to vote for Kay Bailey Hutchison or Debra Medina in hopes of at least forcing a run-off against incumbent Rick Perry. Some actually like Perry. Some actually liked Hutchison. Some really liked Medina.

But my first order of business for this post is to vigorously chastise those who didn't go take care of business yesterday, who are now whining and kvetching about what is wrong with this state/how can they pick him again/he's horrible, who did this?

In short, you did this. You didn't go register your discontent with Perry. So you may shut up right now. 

And don't give me some BS about being too busy. Early voting. Look into it. Get your voter registration in order before November, and drag your sorry behind to a polling place. You can vote on the weekend if you vote early. So do it. Or shush. Forever. Seriously. I'm typing this in my, "I mean business," tone. 

And now for some other hijinks, which I will mine from the Dallas Observer, who has done a phenomenal job of somehow finding the ugly underbelly of area politics.

How about we start with Eric Johnson and Terri Hodge. Even though several of the old guard said he wouldn't win, that Hodge deserved to win even though she was pokey-bound, something something democratic process precinct chairs should pick someone, he won. Without kissing a ring of any kind, I assume.

So there's that. Apparently people might just be tired of what is perceived to be business as usual in that neck of the woods. Maybe they're tired of seeing their leadership investigated by the FBI and paraded in front of judges. Maybe they remembered that Eric Johnson isn't some punk that moved in to run - he's one of them.

And then there's this brouhaha with Craig Watkins' campaign. First, I want to say that I have long admired Watkins' work to exonerate those unjustly convicted of crimes in Dallas County. But the man has a notoriously thin skin and an incredibly jerky knee. To survive in politics, he's going to need some armor and something for that patella tremor. 

But to whoever posted all those comments (apparently from an Internet connection belonging to Craig Watkins Attorney), lemme let you know something. IP addresses? Kinda trackable. For instance, I can frequently see who visits here. If their IP address is attached to a business, it generally shows up. So if you're gonna try to do your boss/friend/mentor/brother/son a favor, you should do it from a less traceable computer. 

And you can bash Sam Merten all you want, but I would've done the same thing. Sock puppetry is dishonest, and disingenuous. If Craig Watkins had salient information for Merten, he could've e-mailed or called. But to give yourself a bunch of aliases and cast around some rumors against Watkins' Republican opponent is dirty pool, verging on what the Nixon administration charmingly called "rat fucking."  

And to Craig Watkins: You can bellyache all you want about media scrutiny, but as my granny said, you must dance with the gal that brought ya. You can't court the media when you walk out of the courtroom with a newly exonerated person, but then duck them and cry that they're persecuting you when they ask you salient questions about your doings. It doesn't work that way. 

And like it or not, a man who associates his name with the word integrity by beginning the Convictions Integrity Unit in his department can and will be held to a higher standard. You associate yourself with the word, expect questions when people wonder if something's off. You want to stand for integrity, so you're going to have to deal with everything that comes with it.

So readers, what surprised you or didn't surprise you about yesterday's election results? Was Sam Merten wrong to reveal that IP address? Comment, already.

*Not a euphemism. I actually mean I baked actual muffins. In an actual oven. I'm not talking about babies or sex. Muffins. Swear.

How to Give Rick Perry a Run for His Money - An Open Letter to Kay Bailey Hutchison

Oh, Kay, I kept waiting for you to really call out your incumbent opponent for Texas governor - Rick Perry. Sure, you poo-poo'd his Trans Texas Corridor project, but you did it with all the useless venom of a lady whispering behind her hand about a companion's scuffed Manolo's.  

Politics, as you should know, is a blood sport. It's more Mel Gibson in Braveheart than Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma. Yet,  it feels as if your campaign is disjointed and malaise-ridden. And to top it off, Rick Perry has clay feet. You could easily topple him, yet you won't. He's the worst kind of politician, which, as I told someone else today, is like saying he's the worst kind of ass pimple.

But for giggles, lemme tell you how to beat (or at least come a lot closer to it) Rick Perry:

1. You went to the right of Perry. When you did, you found Debra Medina already comfy there. You don't have the record to be right of Perry. Your core demographic should've been centerist to mid-Perry. There are a ton of voters out there looking for a conservative with common sense that isn't afraid to sometimes wiggle to the left a little.

2. Perry has a literal metric crap ton of things to ding him on. The death penalty and his refusal to investigate the Willingham case. His inability to be proactive when it comes to a review of death penalty cases after Texas began leading the nation in exonerations. A governor interested in justice would've called a moratorium on executions until every case was reviewed. And we haven't even started on the TYC or all the issues with CPS. Or the fact that he's still refusing to pardon a man who died in prison and was posthumously exonerated.

3. Perry keeps talking about your use of earmarks. ANSWER HIM. Instead of that cockamamie dead issue of the Trans Texas Corridor you've beat like a dead horse already on the glue cart to get the ranchers all riled up, if you really want to connect with your potential rural constituents, tell them how you used earmarks to help communities like theirs to build this, fund that. Point out to Perry that these earmarks were on the behalf of Texas.

4. Call Perry on his hypocrisy. He claims he hasn't taken federal dollars, but no, what he's done is loudly proclaimed he wouldn't, squawked about secession, and then quietly applied for federal funds anyway. He is a lying liar who lies, and well, you probably are, too, but you could at least call him on his, because it's so very easy.

5. Grow a pair. 

It is, honestly, probably too late for you to win, even if this thing goes to a runoff. So, Bill White, lemme say that nearly everything above also applies to you. The most recent Pew study about millennials pointed out that they self-identify overwhelmingly as Liberals, and as Democrats. Yet, they are probably unlikely to vote in a non-presidential election - unless you can fire them up. Perry's reckless disregard for justice and human life would do just that.

Getting their ire to simmer won't be enough. Go forth, and conflagrate. 

Dear Kay Bailey Hutchison:

Are you trying to lose this, or do you really want to know if we'd like government-issued GPS units in our cars that can not only record "taxable miles" (whatever the what that is), but also give the state a whole lot of other information it doesn't need?

Please tell us your Facebook account got hacked. Because this? This makes Rick Perry look smart and snuggly.

 

Noooo ... We Don't Put Innocent Men on Death Row

As we've discussed here before, Rick Perry is pretty damned insistent that he did not kill an innocent man. For a millisecond, it seemed like he might be right, because Cameron Todd Willingham's ex-wife said he confessed to her.

But she's a liar. Other places won't say it, but I will. She lies. She's a lying liar who lies. Maybe he did confess, but it contradicts everything else she's ever said. So she lied then, or she's lying now. But by any definition, she's a lying liar who lies.

Grits for Breakfast has an excellent breakdown of her inconsistencies, but let's just take one - her statement to the Corsicana Daily Sun in 2004. In that story, she said she became convinced of his guilt, but that even a pre-execution visit didn't result in a confession to her.

She either lied then, or she's lying now. 

Fiscally Conservative - and Pro-Death Penalty?

Today, we learned that the death penalty, on average, costs about $10 million more per year per state than life without parole, according to The Death Penalty Information Center.

So let's talk finances. Texas now has an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent, a 22-year high. As people move out and businesses shut down, that's less in both property taxes collected and in sales tax revenue. If building slows down, as it seems it may, we're looking at further slow down.