Wendy Davis is Texas Progressive Alliance's 'Texan of Year'

Big surprise, eh?

http://brainsandeggs.blogspot.com/2013/12/wendy-davis-is-tpas-texan-of-year.html

I totally get that

After hearing Al From and other Third Wayers talk about their beliefs -- and their (relative to mine, yours, and others like us) control over Democratic Party developments with regard to presidential nominations...

... well, I just don't see Bernie going for that. I could be wrong.

There's a greater chance Elizabeth Warren fits into that coat than Sanders. But she isn't going to run against Hillary. Sanders might challenge Clinton in a party primary or two, but I would be surprised if he did so after, say, New Hampshire. JMHO.

A more orthodox Democrat, like O'Malley or Schweitzer, stands a better chance of carrying that torch than Sanders. He's more to the left than Kucinich (and there is NOTHING wrong with that).

But he's not a Democrat.

He's an independent who caucuses with the Dems in the Senate, and IIRC (no time for Googling at the moment) is a self-identified socialist.

Yet most respondents to this poll want him to run in the D primary. Isn't that incongruent?

It makes a great stocking stuffer for your right-wing relatives

And not the kiddos, either.

Caption this pic of Steve Stockman and Ted Nugent

Daily Kos censors cartoonist Ted Rall over ‘ape-like depiction’ of Obama

Mediaite takes the position that Ted Rall might be a racist.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/daily-kos-censors-cartoonist-over-ape-like-depiction-of-president-obama/

I am certain that there are strong opinions about Daily Kos, censorship, Ted Rall, his cartoons, whether he is a racist, and even Mediaite for that matter... but my question is: does Ted Rall draw Obama as 'ape-like'?

I've read Rall for years now and I just never made that leap. (But maybe it's because I'm a white guy and agree more with Rall's POV on matters political, and less with Obama's.)

As premise, I tend toward devaluing Daily Kos and the mob mentality they occasionally demonstrate in this particular matter. Remember they got Scott Prouty, the guy who filmed Romney's 47% video, banned due to the "self-policing standards" the members there exhibit. So perhaps my overriding bias is a derogatory view of DK.

Lots of moving parts here, but to distill: Is Ted Rall a bigot? Does he draw Obama looking simian? If he does, is that worthy of being censored at Kos -- or even here, for that matter? I tend to answer 'no' to those three questions.

Am I wrong?

Gasoline prices in the US

are more demand-sensitive inside the US. (Gasoline remains subject to the vagaries of being a global commodity. The "national security" argument conservatives make in favor of Keystone XL fails on the understanding that most of its gasoline will be sold to China and other overseas markets.) Gas prices has been falling for a few months now due to decreased demand; that demand recently kicked up, reducing inventories, so the price has followed.

US refineries are running at peak capacity also, so if one should have a fire or an unexpected shutdown (routine maintenance is usually not performed in the winter) then you would see a spike in gas prices.

There's more to it, of course, but in short... the price of a barrel of oil and the price of a US gallon of gasoline have both related and unrelated sensitivities.

I don't think he'd be running as a Democrat.

So does that cue up the Nader Haters if Clinton were to lose?

(I personally don't think Clinton can lose... and I especially think this is true if she selects a Latino from Texas as a running mate.)

This was funded by wealthy angry white Dallasites

Dallas — with no river, port or natural resources of its own — has always fashioned itself as a city with no reason for being, a city that triumphed against all odds, a city that validates the sheer power of individual will and the particular ideology that champions it above all else. “Dallas,” the journalist Holland McCombs observed in Fortune in 1949, “doesn’t owe a damn thing to accident, nature or inevitability. It is what it is ... because the men of Dallas damn well planned it that way.”

Those “men of Dallas” — men like my grandfather, oil men and corporate executives, self-made but self-segregated in a white-collar enclave in a decidedly blue-collar state — often loathed the federal government at least as much as, if not more than, they did the Soviet Union or Communist China. The country musician Jimmy Dale Gilmore said it best in his song about the city: “Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eye ... a rich man who tends to believe in his own lies.”

For those men, Kennedy was a veritable enemy of the state, which is why a group of them would commission and circulate “Wanted for Treason” pamphlets before the president’s arrival and fund the presciently black-rimmed “Welcome Mr. Kennedy” advertisement that ran in The Dallas Morning News on the morning of Nov. 22. It’s no surprise that four separate confidants warned the president not to come to Dallas: an incident was well within the realm of imagination.

The wives of these men — socialites and homemakers, Junior Leaguers and ex-debutantes — were no different; in fact, they were possibly even more extreme. (After all, there’s a reason Carol Burnett pulls a gun on Julie Andrews at the end of the famous “Big D” routine the two performed before the assassination in the early 1960s. “What are ya,” she screams, pulling the trigger, “some kinda nut?!”)

Kinky's in for Ag Commish

As a Democrat. Running on weed.

I say let him run, and here's why.

http://brainsandeggs.blogspot.com/2013/10/kinkys-in-for-ag-commish.html