Beto Does it Again

You need to stop complementing the legislature. They ain't that good and wouldn't be on anyone's free agent list.
Have you SEEN some of the boneheaded decisions made by that franchise though? The Texans are STILL the Jacksonville Jaguars of New York Jets of Detroit Lions mismanagement...
 
The only mistake they did not make was when they could have traded JJ Watt in his prime for two fifth round draft choices, which they would have screwed up.

Had a chance to join friends in buying a luxury box when the stadium was announced. McNair hired Charlie Disasterly as GM, and I said "hold my check". Then they hired Chris Palmer as OC, and I said, send the check back. The only game I've watched them play was when VY came to town as a rookie and scrambled for a TD in overtime to beat them.
 
You need to stop complementing the legislature. They ain't that good and wouldn't be on anyone's free agent list.

If the Legislature is as it was when I worked there in the mid and late '90s, then you have maybe 30 House members who do the real work (not the "sexy" bills that get all the attention but the really important bills that have to get authored and passed to have a functioning state). They author serious legislation, and they study and actually know the important bills under consideration. The other 120 of them are largely superfluous for one reason or another. They're either self-promoting grandstanders who don't actually care about legislation, too lazy, too dumb, too dishonest, too drunk, or are just there for the generous retirement and health insurance benefits. Sometimes one of the useless ones will have a personal or local interest in an issue and get involved with it and then leave everything else to the useful people. On very rare occasions, you'll even see a useless member decide not to be useless anymore and become useful.

The Senate is usually much less this way, because it's harder to get elected to the Senate and harder to hide if you're too useless. However, it has its share of dead weight too.
 
Congress is even more dominates by useless clowns, and the incentive structure too heavily favors being a useless clown

yep, and the longer they stay the richer and more useless they become. Hence my desire for term limits,,,,,,and a balanced budget, neither of which will ever happen. Oh and not trying to bring back the term limit pro/con argument, I know your position.
 
yep, and the longer they stay the richer and more useless they become. Hence my desire for term limits,,,,,,and a balanced budget, neither of which will ever happen. Oh and not trying to bring back the term limit pro/con argument, I know your position.

Nash, the legislators who did the real work were almost always senior members. I'm not saying there were no useless members with seniority. There were. However, there were virtually no junior members who carried or understood important legislation. It takes a long time to understand something like the budget or school finance. I don't mean understand it generally. I mean understand it well enough to author legislation that can be put into effect and enforced by the courts without creating calamity.

One example from my days, in 1997 the Legislature considered and passed a major water resources reform bill. Water is one of these issues that nobody cares about (because it's boring and largely apolitical) but if something goes wrong, nobody will care about anything else.

Did some idealistic junior member author the reform? Hell no. None of them knew anything about the issue, and none of them cared about it enough to study it. The legislature turned to a senior senator who had been a key member of the relevant committee for about 15 years and knew what the hell he was doing.
 
mb
You mean the idiot Matthew Dowd who said in 2018 that it was time for white Christian Hetero males to step down and let others who do not look like him to govern?
That numbnut?

And you all wondered by I would only call Beta "one of the biggest handjobs in politics." As bad as he is, someone can always be a bigger handjob.
 
Somehow I do not believe Schumer or Pelosi wrote one word of the encyclopedia sized pork laden give away bill. In fact I bet it was written, by and large, by aides, maybe aides that have been there a loooong time but not by the legislature’s themselves. Am I wrong? Well now that I think a bit on it, more likely by lobbyist groups.
 
Somehow I do not believe Schumer or Pelosi wrote one word of the encyclopedia sized pork laden give away bill. In fact I bet it was written, by and large, by aides, maybe aides that have been there a loooong time but not by the legislature’s themselves. Am I wrong? Well now that I think a bit on it, more likely by lobbyist groups.

I'm not referring to the people who literally write the text. Though members can write text, that's extraordinarily rare. The text is usually written by a legislation-writing agency employed by the legislature (the Office of Legislative Counsel for Congress and the Texas Legislative Council at the Texas Legislature). And yes, for legislation that involves high-powered special interests, lobbyists and their outside counsels often write the text and get a member to carry it.

Where the seniority comes in is knowing what belongs in a bill and sometimes more importantly what doesn't, knowing when one's being BS'd by the lobby or some other shenanigan pulled on him, and having the credibility to get others in the legislature to go along with a proposal. It takes experience to do that. Being a politician isn't a skilled position. Any good bullshitter can do it. However, being an effective legislator is a highly-skilled position.
 
Beto = a politician who wants to be a celebrity

McConaughey = a celebrity who wants to be a politician
 
Does anyone take The Lincoln Project seriously? They are either RINOs or Dem operatives. They seem to be opposed to any Republican plan, candidate or office holder.
 
Does anyone take The Lincoln Project seriously? They are either RINOs or Dem operatives. They seem to be opposed to any Republican plan, candidate or office holder.

As an anti-Trump Republican, I was very receptive to the Lincoln Project at one point. However, rather than just opposing Trump's worst activities and statements and calling him out when he did wrong, they completely beclowned themselves.

For starters, they couldn't admit that he did anything right. Well, if you claim to be a conservative as they do, you can't deny that his judicial nominations and regulatory policies were largely good. Even Jonah Goldberg and his people can do that.

Second, they actively supported Democrats and the media even as they were swinging hard left. Again, you can't do that and claim to be a conservative. They didn't have to do that. They could have supported a potential Trump primary opponent or encouraged people to vote third party, but they didn't do that.

Third, there were no Republicans they would support. They put a lot of effort into unseating Sue Collins. Well, if she's too conservative and Trump-friendly for you, I don't know what to tell you. She's probably the least partisan person on Capitol Hill. Only the most hyperpartisan Democrats would oppose her.

Well, in light of all that it was pretty clear that they weren't anti-Trump Republicans. They were unprincipled hacks who sold their souls to liberal donors for a few pieces of silver.

And of course, this doesn't even account for the fact that they covered for and protected a guy who was selling political opportunity and favors for blowjobs from dudes.
 
Did anyone notice that Trump won the county with Rio Grande City in it? That's Guillen's town. The Western part of the Valley is trending Conservative.

Wait, on edit: Trump won Zapata County, just to the West/Northwest of Rio Grande City. He narrowly lost Starr County--home of Rio Grande City. Still, the Western end of the Valley is trending Conservative. This is a new development. It's been a long time since the GOP won anything significant down there.

Map shows how Texas counties voted in 2020 election
 
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I'm not sure how well Beto will play down in the Valley. I bet they can spot a fake.

I'd rather see McConaughey take down Beto in the primary and face Abbott. Assuming McConaughey runs as a Democrat...
 
I prefer that Abbott loses an R primary and we get stronger conservative leadership in Texas. Huffhines or West would be better.
 
Wonder how much outside Dem money will pour in this time?
I can tell you most County Republican orgs will not allow any Dem tricks with voting.
 
What's the O/U for how many Juan Gonzales' vote with the same SS number? That SS card is their only form of ID. I will take the over if the number is anywhere South of 100,000
 

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