2024-01-30 15:00
I had heard the news about that so-called pseudo-pharmacy in the White House last Friday, but didn't pay attention until I saw Ambien trending on Twitter and #BlueAnon bagging on Ronny Jacks… Read More
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Socraticgadfly Blog
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A skeptical left-liberal's blogging on Texas and national politics, environmentalism, journalism, church-state issues, atheism, more
2024-01-30 00:32
Per the Guardian, discussed also at Raw Story, a group of 25 US Civil War and Reconstruction historians back the Colorado Supreme Court removing Donald Trump from the ballot, in an amicus br… Read More
2024-01-26 15:00
Harper's has a deep dive
on truck driving and driver training school, or, as one economist calls
it, "a sweatshop on wheels." It touches on the issue of the romance of
trucking for people… Read More
2024-01-25 20:09
At one time, I thought getting rid of downvote buttons on social media sites was a bad thing. I even argued with others about that.I stand corrected.The downvote is hugely abused by people o… Read More
2024-01-24 18:34
There's no other way to put it than the headline. The PRO Gainesville saga has been going on for three-plus years now. And, not content to lose a Class A misdemeanor case locally, a tri… Read More
2024-01-24 15:30
Biden now has a leg back up on Abbott in one area: the DOJ report on Uvalde, releasing more information about the clusterfuck that Strangeabbott continues to do his best to try to hide. Kuff… Read More
2024-01-23 15:00
Houston — less affordable than New York City, per recent studies,
as reported by the Monthly. (DFW isn't far behind.) The gas costs of
suburban sprawl is a big factor. And, wan… Read More
2024-01-22 21:20
A week ago, I noted several Democratic climate change minimizers in comments to a Nate Silver piece on Substack.Last Friday at his Roaming Charges, Jeff St. Clair confirmed, with link to the… Read More
2024-01-19 15:15
As anybody who knows much about climate change knows, problems with polar vortexes in specific and upper-latitude jet streams in general are a climate change issue.Yet, just a couple of week… Read More
2024-01-18 17:33
It's long been known that many antidepressants seem to be little better than placebo for major depression.The typical answer from the psychiatric world, if not from every individual psychiat… Read More
2024-01-17 15:55
SocraticGadfly got to hear Republican SD-30 candidates schwaffle on vouchers. Off the Kuff interviewed six candidates for the open SD15: Karthik Soora, Michelle Bonton, Molly Cook, Rep. Jarv… Read More
2024-01-16 15:00
Bernard Tamas, a poly-sci prof at Valdosta State and author of a book on third parties, recently spoke with Politico about this year's presidential landscape.First, his analysis of current t… Read More
2024-01-15 14:25
I know a lot of Democrats hate themselves some Nate Silver. (I don't know about other leftists, but I myself mock him without thinking he's an object of anything close to actual hatred.)That… Read More
2024-01-12 14:56
I do NOT think that Ohio transgender (we don't use those object-free prefix "trans" here) or transsexual candidates getting knocked off the ballot for not revealing a name change of less tha… Read More
2024-01-11 19:39
TCEQ: complicit in big polluters dodging federal law. The biggest beneficiaries are often oil-and-gas related, but it's pervasive.Kermit's infrastructure is crumbling and it's their own faul… Read More
2024-01-11 15:00
As promised, Biden's DOJ is suing Strangeabbott over Senate Bill 4 empowering Texas law enforcement to make arrests for "illegal entry." I think it's likely it will lose again, given the Ari… Read More
2024-01-10 15:20
Even before I saw a couple of pieces at Mondoweiss, one with exactly this framing, that was my thought.There was a raft of McCarthyist (the original one and the guy just booted as Speaker, b… Read More
2024-01-09 15:00
Cooke County Republican Women had the first of two candidate forums Jan. 4. At the regional level, it featured the four contenders for Texas Senate District 30, and locally, the four for Cou… Read More
2024-01-08 15:00
As normal, these were the most read items of last month, but not necessarily written last month, and I'll note posts that weren't "fresh."At No. 10? I said, on behalf of Kate Cox, fuck… Read More
2024-01-06 17:00
The Texas Observer has a flub-filled list of Top 20 Texas-related books of the year. Two biggest errors? Listing Jeff Guinn's Koresh/Waco book (good) and a much lesser one by Kevin Cook, whi… Read More
2024-01-05 15:00
Talking about cis-Saharan vs. trans-Saharan Africa is sure a trigger. I was even called "sis." Guess nobody on r/geography has heard of old Roman Cisalpine Gaul vs Transalpine Gaul.Speaking… Read More
2024-01-04 18:59
"5 Big Ideas for Improving the Endangered Species Act"
is good overall. That said, three of the ideas of Jackie Flynn Mogeson are already in the
current ESA, just need to be used more. I s… Read More
2024-01-04 15:00
SocraticGadfly looks at the number of independent and third-party candidates in the 2024 presidential race and speculates on the chances on it going to the House. Off the Kuff's main issue w… Read More
2024-01-04 04:30
Robert Reich thinks
that Harvard's donor class, namely its Zionist members, risk fueling
actual antisemitism by chasing out President Claudine Gay. This:As
a Jew, I also cannot help but w… Read More
2024-01-03 15:00
Or "Peanut Butter and Johnson" as I called the South Dallas AND South Dallas suburbs Congresscritter, who only visited the burbs once in 9 years, and that for a Recovery Act highway project… Read More
2024-01-02 15:00
As usual, not all are FROM 2023, but these were the most read of last year. We'll work from bottom up.At No. 10, I wrote about the cautionary tale of Jacob de Grom and his being shelved agai… Read More
2023-12-30 18:25
The Trib takes a semi-deep dive
on how Abbott lost the battle for vouchers in the House side of the
Lege. TL/DR is that refusal to make the program limited and means-tested
was the big fa… Read More
2023-12-29 17:11
The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy by James Risen
My rating: 3 of 5 starsI really wanted to like this book whe… Read More
2023-12-28 19:53
So, two months ago, I did a long piece on Socialist Party USA presidential nominee Bill Stodden and specific reasons why I wouldn't vote for him.I partially, but not totally, lost one of the… Read More
2023-12-27 19:13
Yes, but, Jeff St. Clair, on your reposting two months ago of a 2019 piece explaining the rigors of your annual major fundraising drive. One-quarter of what Counterpunch runs is dreck… Read More
2023-12-26 15:30
First, I will occasionally update this first-round guesstimate as we get firmer polling numbers not just on Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, Jill Stein, an… Read More
2023-12-23 18:42
Whetherr it's (ex)-Berners trying to score points on Biden on this issue, as has been the case for a full year now, or simple hysterics, the COVID doomers have been out and about on Twitter… Read More
2023-12-22 16:21
After largely wrongly, it seems, stanning for Miles when he ran Dallas ISD, and largely being sidelined at D Mag after a ceremonial rollout in early 2020 after the Dallas Observer dumped him… Read More
2023-12-21 15:00
How will community college funding changes by the Lege change said colleges' student recruitment angles? The Trib looks at Vernon College. That said, questions remain, including about w… Read More
2023-12-20 17:29
This year's Texas Monthly Bum Steer for 2024? Who else but Dannie Goeb himself, aka Dan Patrick.
Kenny Boy Paxton was a runner-up (natch) as were Elmo Musk and Texas A&M. And, per the p… Read More
2023-12-20 14:33
Behind the scenes of the Supreme Court's ruling on Dobbs and the Roe reversal. One big issue is that the leaked draft, per the story, probably hardened all of the apparently locked-in conser… Read More
2023-12-19 15:00
Everybody else is writing about Shohei Ohtani's record-breaking contract with the Dodgers, so why shouldn't I?First, per the header? I think it's a big fat overpay. Got in an argument months… Read More
2023-12-18 15:00
I heard about this more than a week ago, but wanted to offer something up anyway.First, some apologists may say this is like defending the Nazis in Skokie 50 years ago.No it's not.The NRA ma… Read More
2023-12-15 15:00
Yeah, Kelsey Grammer may be a MAGAts member, and said so
to the Beeb before Paramount+ folks cut his interview short. But,
contra Kuff, that is no less a reason to watch a Frasier reboot t… Read More
2023-12-14 15:00
On behalf of Kate Cox, fuck the Texas Supreme Court.With more, Off the Kuff writes about the emergency lawsuit that would have allowed a Dallas woman to get an abort… Read More
2023-12-14 06:06
Saw the story on the front page of the Snooze earlier this week. Wow. Not even 60.He was indeed a trailblazer, especially on the matter of exonerations of those wrongly convicted, one of the… Read More
2023-12-13 18:24
As noted by Phil Weiss himself at Mondoweiss, The Nation has published new odiousness by Alexis Grenell, who invoked "goysplaning" not quite two years in relation to similar dreck, as blogge… Read More
2023-12-13 14:55
Again, not all of these posts are from November; they're just the most popular of the last month.No. 10? Based on a piece from Smithsonian, my takedown on the Ev Psych sexism of "man (the ma… Read More
2023-12-12 21:41
Kate Cox appeared to have a "win" with a Travis County district court
approving her to have a seemingly medically indicated abortion and
cutting through the surely deliberate "fog" at the… Read More
2023-12-12 15:07
Every two years here in Tex-ass we hear talk about "turn Texas blue."And, every two years, Skipper Gilberto Hinojosa and the crew of Gilligans on SS Texas Democrats fail once again.That said… Read More
2023-12-11 19:52
Swartz shows in detail why she's still the queen bee of Texas political media. (I had originally headered the piece "Swartz goes behind the scenes," but there's really not a bunch of previou… Read More
2023-12-11 15:00
The more shit? The claims that Boris Yeltsin's replacement by Vladimir Putin was "another US operation through the oligarchs." Really, dude? Anybody who knows anything knows that Yeltsi… Read More
2023-12-08 15:13
James Dorsey has to me been generally very good and very insightful on Middle Eastern affairs — before Oct. 7. This piece, though, shows that while he's not Genocide Joe, he's not all… Read More
2023-12-07 21:20
#AbandonBiden is the hashtag a group of Muslim-Americans are trying to get trend, and not just trend on social media, but trend in the real world 11 months from now.For the dickheads like Ma… Read More
2023-12-06 14:53
State District Judge Daniella DeSita Lyttle tells DPS and jefe Steve McCraw to release Uvalde records. The state has 20 days to appeal, which it surely will. And, as the story notes, that co… Read More
2023-12-05 15:00
Via Local Profile, an online mag for Collin County, we learn that Texas is the third-worst state for people in financial distress.The only two worse? Louisiana and Mississippi. So, in the no… Read More
2023-12-04 15:00
A day or two ago, I posted about the possibility of the Cardinals trading Nolan Arenado. And most commenters went batshit crazy.First, as to "he'll never be traded except for another future… Read More
2023-12-02 18:42
I guess Lancaster City Manager Opal Mauldin-Robertson is doing what she thinks a good city manager would do, but this PR statement after a shooting in Lancaster is a transparent howler:While… Read More
2023-12-01 17:58
Quo vadis vouchers, Switek asks at the Trib, even as Strangeabbott released an endorsement list of House Rethuglicans. No voucher foes got one, but the four flip-floppers on the last bill, i… Read More
2023-12-01 15:00
This one dips a bit hard into the ev psych world, so take it with a grain or two of salt, but reportedly, homosexuality in mammals
may have evolved to reduce group conflict. Given that same… Read More
2023-11-30 19:05
Greg Grandin, who wrote THE book on Kissinger, has the best straight-up, news but realism, obituary.With people like Hank the Knife, though, my angle is always for the "takedown" obituary, t… Read More
2023-11-30 15:00
I've called out Hudson before for his apparent belief that the biblical year of jubilee, or the seven-cycle culmination of sabbath years with an extra year to make 50, was actually real. The… Read More
2023-11-29 15:00
Two weeks ago, I blogged about Stein, the Green Party's 2012 and 2016 candidate, jumping back in the race this year after Cornel West did his Lucy van Pelt and pulled away his football. I di… Read More
2023-11-28 15:05
A press release run through the Texas Press Association from Laborhutt said that was the best analogy to explain who they are.Basically, people sign up through Laborhutt to help people in th… Read More
2023-11-27 21:01
The title piece in the headline comes from Mondoweiss. It's a great piece. That said, while it's written specifically about the current situation with Israel, it applies to about all of Amer… Read More
2023-11-27 14:46
I don't know why exactly Joe Biden's new, agent-enhanced IRS decided to scare the hell out of middle-class Americans like me by sending us a letter, months removed from the end of normal tax… Read More
2023-11-24 15:00
Per a piece by Carl Zimmer, we know that there are, at a minimum, more than 3,000 different types of cells in the human brain. This is reinforcement for what I said years ago: That neuroscie… Read More
2023-11-22 18:59
Just dropping tidbits here, including parts of my editorial column from last week for starters.First, it's "lovely" that NY Mag's Intelligencer is platforming a conspiracy theorist
in Scott… Read More
2023-11-22 15:00
We need a new conspiracy theory! And I have one!Israel whacked Jack because he knew too much about Dimona!No, seriously, within the warped thinking of conspiracy theorists, this one is total… Read More
2023-11-21 20:11
It's "nice" that the Trib, and a reporter in Denton who should know better, think that Sherman is "rural" when reporting on the kerfuffle about the transgender student yanked from performing… Read More
2023-11-21 15:34
So, my House Legiscritter, David Spiller, was one of four rural
Republican members of the House, anti-vouchers steadfast through the
regular sesssion of the Texas Lege, and the first three… Read More
2023-11-20 14:43
Today, I'm plenty familiar with Juan de Oñate's barbarity, but, growing up in Gallup, New Mexico, probably about the same time that Deborah Jackson Taffa was growing up in Farmington… Read More
2023-11-17 15:00
Evolutionary psychology, or its parent/uncle, sociobiology, among its more sexist tropes, latched on to the idea first seriously propounded 60 years or so ago that males evolved to hunt, wom… Read More
2023-11-16 20:45
Having been dumb enough not to accept a presumable plea deal from County Attorney Ed Zielinski on the misdemeanor charge of obstructing a major passageway, the PRO Gainesville leadership tri… Read More
2023-11-16 18:41
Jill Stein, seeking a third Green Party presidential nominee, calls for an investigation of Bibi Netanyahu's war crimes, and for Joe Biden's abetting them.One step related to that? The Cente… Read More
2023-11-16 15:00
And even more over Katharine Hayhoe.The last person is not mentioned in a piece by Bob Henson, formerly of Weather Underground, now of Yale Climate Connections, over a battle between Hanson… Read More
2023-11-15 15:00
The LA Times writes about the Californication of Tex-ass, and how, per the old "wherever you go, there you are" pop psychology adage, they're essentially bringing many of California urbaniza… Read More
2023-11-14 19:26
The carpetbagging (you are) CD-4 Texas Congresscritter is not running for re-election.OK, that of itself no big deal.But wanting to get back his old Texas Senate District 30 seat?THAT is a b… Read More
2023-11-14 15:28
A bunch of DSA oldtimers like Harold Meyerson and Peter Dreier say they're leaving the organization, primarily because it's too strong in support of Hamas, but also because it has other puri… Read More
2023-11-13 19:44
After Cornel West did his Lucy
van Pelt and pulled the football away from the Green Party to run for president as an independent instead, 2012 and 2016 GP presidential nominee and her… Read More
2023-11-13 15:00
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has of course been an antivaxxer of long standing. But, he's far worse than that.Bob Jr. is also a Cold War 2.0 Cold Warrior, per this Tweet,
getting a boner for the p… Read More
2023-11-11 16:22
I grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, where the late Medal of Honor winner was born and lived all his life outside his military service time. As the feature part of a newspaper Veterans Day speci… Read More
2023-11-10 15:00
Multiple new items on homo sapiens in the news, some directly or indirectly via Carl Zimmer.First, we have more confirmation
for those human footprints at White Sands National Park and thei… Read More
2023-11-09 18:08
Reminder: Texas Progressives stand with Gaza despite Genocide Joe and despite an Israeli cabinet member's talk of nukes. BlueAnon may have thought I was talking about Wallbuilders' Dav… Read More
2023-11-09 15:00
This week's Roundup is split into two parts, with this first part focused on the death of vouchers in the just-ended special session of the Texas Legislature and what the future might hold.R… Read More
2023-11-08 19:00
For me, there's no reason for sodium in soda, whether as salt or as sodium benzoate used as a preservative. Livestrong has more, starting with that it can be antifungal, and this may, theore… Read More
2023-11-08 15:00
He's basically up shit creek on further big bucks from the US government, as Israel-Gaza sucks the oxygen out of the room. Plus, if new wingnut-squared Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is h… Read More
2023-11-07 20:43
Dear Leader has said "nobody's hands are clean."
He didn't explicitly include his own, and like some fellow leftist
types, it would be easy to scoff at him talking around an issue, as the… Read More
2023-11-07 19:00
PsyPost is often interesting, sometimes good. And, occasionally crap. And, on my blogroll. (For now.)When I saw the piece Friday morning with the header "Left-wing antihierarchical aggressio… Read More
2023-11-06 15:00
In the wake of Cornel West announcing a month ago that he would abandon his bid for the Green Party nomination and instead run as an independent because Jill Stein and friends wouldn't clear… Read More
2023-11-04 14:00
As is normal, these may not all be FROM October, and I'll note those that are not.As usual, reverse order from 10 to 1 with the appropriate drumroll at the end.No 10 was a Texas Progressives… Read More
2023-11-03 14:00
Since the relatively abrupt resignation of Peter Daou as his campaign manager a week ago, Cornel West needed to do something about that.And, he has, albeit more with smoke, mirrors and marke… Read More
2023-11-02 15:08
Learn about Speaker Mike Johnson, Christian nationalist.Off the Kuff expresses his Mayoral thoughts about John Whitmire and Sheila Jackson Lee. Stace makes his unpaid for, no membership… Read More
2023-11-01 18:14
A month ago, I wrote about
the planned leak of RFK Jr.'s big announcement for Oct. 9, which is, of
course, today, and the leak indicating that he will indeed run as an
independent. And, n… Read More
2023-11-01 14:02
Credit where credit is due to Elon Musk IF he follows through on his promise. Last Saturday, Musk said
he would extend Starlink connectivity to internationally recognized aid
organizations… Read More
2023-10-31 14:00
Have microbes been found inside of cancerous tumors? Maybe, maybe not.
We know that cancer is a constellation of diseases, and at least some,
per the HPV vaccine, are caused by infectious… Read More
2023-10-30 16:27
The Libertarian platform
talks about people owning their own bodies, it does NOT explicitly tie
that to "reproductive choice" or "abortion." Neither is mentioned in the
platform. An… Read More
2023-10-27 19:16
Peter Daou had this to say to people questioning him on his announcement yesterday on leaving the Cornel West presidential campaign as its campaign manager, discussed by me in an update to b… Read More
2023-10-27 07:09
I was planning on posting this a week or two ago, but a variety of other things giving me a full blogging plate made me wait. And West's announcement that he was ditching the Greens to run i… Read More
2023-10-26 18:56
I've hit multiple paywalls in the past week from both Seymour Hersh and Patrick Cockburn.And, I'm sure if I were a paid subscriber, below the fold (their paywall "folds" have been set at wel… Read More
2023-10-26 14:00
Or totally tasty, for that matter.Four years ago, I blogged about the Genetic Literacy Project touting the wonders of the Impossible Burger, and how healthy it supposedly is.And now, I have… Read More
2023-10-25 18:25
Other untrue metaphysics to come?For the second time in a month, the Observer seems to be touting
religion as a get-out-of-jail card (literally), ignoring that secular
people, including se… Read More
2023-10-25 14:00
As shown in the Louisiana governor's race, Black Democratic backing for Warmonger Joe is getting softer. There, turnout was way down; nationwide, Biden's percentage of support is softening… Read More
2023-10-25 02:28
Gym Jordan withdrew from chasing the brass ring yesterday, after losing his third vote, then getting dumped by the House GOP caucus, and at least half a dozen people,
including Pete Session… Read More
2023-10-25 01:55
The Socialist Party USA (an actual political party of actual socialists, not a "lite" interest group within the Democratic Party) has its presidential and vice presidential nominee, per Twit… Read More
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