2023-01-25 14:30
At the Monthly, Chris Hooks takes a look at legends past and present surrounding the iconic "Come and Take It" flag. (In Sulphur Springs, there's a "Come and Taste It" stew cook-off.) The le… Read More
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Socraticgadfly Blog
socraticgadfly.blogspot.com
A skeptical left-liberal's blogging on Texas and national politics, environmentalism, journalism, church-state issues, atheism, more
2023-01-24 15:00
A team of researchers has a piece there that looked in minute detail at the Internet Research Agency's activities on Twitter in the 2016 election campaign and says it was next to a nothingbu… Read More
2023-01-23 15:00
Kudos to the teen activists trying to shut down the state's last youth prisons. Kudos to their determination not to let up. Hope they've got a Plan B in mind, not just for full closure but s… Read More
2023-01-22 04:31
I'm not sure which is worse, the pablum of Maureen Dowd breathlessly fellating her "satin and steel" leadership, or the New York Post reporting that she supposedly had their house exorcised… Read More
2023-01-20 15:00
This Nielsen Lab piece crystallizes thoughts I've had for some time. Contra the fact checkers, the Facebook and (pre-Smelling Musky) Twitter reporting, etc., first, misinformation isn't as p… Read More
2023-01-19 15:00
Love me some Payday Report, but in this post, there's something wrong with:While most media outlets have ignored the election ...Especially when not followed by, but preceded by: For more, c… Read More
2023-01-18 16:43
The Observer offers its in-depth hot takes on the various stupidities the Lege, abetted by Strangeabbott and Goeb, are likely to inflict on Texans this year. One big issue it notes, only fue… Read More
2023-01-17 18:27
In a largely vacuous piece about the national GOP reaching a tipping point on Ukraine, Kilgore can't be bothered one bit to engage with real, fact-based leftist (or Pope Francis) critique of… Read More
2023-01-16 18:07
And, whether this year or next, bigger or smaller?Interesting thoughts at New York mag from Jon Turek as interviewed by Eric Levitz.TLDR version? Turek thinks recession is more likely next y… Read More
2023-01-14 23:17
Last year I joined Storygraph. I had been considering it even before Amazon gave me the Mafia horse's head in bed treatment and I eventually deleted my Amazon account, leaving me wit… Read More
2023-01-13 18:32
It is certainly possible, per the Texas Observer, that minorities have suffered many COVID-related deaths that aren't counted on official statistics. But, when you're extending that to thing… Read More
2023-01-12 19:00
Pulled from last week's Roundup for more thoughts.The state Supremes said recently that Comptroller Glenn Hegar can officially say fuck-you to a late rush of Chapter 313 filings. I said a we… Read More
2023-01-12 15:00
Here from Tex-ass, John Anthony Castro is suing to block Trump from running in 2024, over the Fourteenth Amendment and Trump being an insurrectionist. Two side notes: JAC is running himself… Read More
2023-01-11 14:51
So, Congress finally voted Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. Here's how much he cut off his balls and fed them to a mix of his own self and the last dissenters from the FreeDumb Caucus to get the j… Read More
2023-01-10 15:00
The Monthly details how Southwest Airlines got to the holidays snafu point. It says that part of the problem is an anti-tech bias within corporate management culture. The piece also explains… Read More
2023-01-09 15:27
First, what is a gomphothere? Per the link, an extinct, largely Northern Hemisphere family of animals related to elephants.Second, are they the reason some trees aren't well spread today? Bl… Read More
2023-01-06 19:00
Yes, we are here. Not because of procrastination, but for other reasons, I delay these blogging roundup pieces by a few days.Anyway, not all of these were posted in 2022, but they were the m… Read More
2023-01-06 14:30
Sounds good, right, that the former Michigan Congresscritter, former Republican now Libertarian, would offer himself up as a compromise, one-term Speaker of the House?Ain't happening, and Am… Read More
2023-01-05 15:45
First, yes, there is an organization billing themselves as such, the People's CDC, complete with website.I came across them via a New Yorker story by Emma Green. As she narrates it and I int… Read More
2023-01-04 15:30
SocraticGadfly looked at how Texas Parks and Wildlife got all butt-hurt over Endangered Species Act listing for the lesser prairie chicken. The state Supremes said that Comptroller Glen… Read More
2023-01-03 15:00
Witness Ronaldo's €200m deal to play for Saudi state-owned footy club Al Nassar.That said, in futbol, it's not limited to the Saudis, as James Dorsey explains in this piece. Arab states… Read More
2023-01-01 20:07
Can't think of many better ways to see the old year end and the new one begin than with the death of Joseph Ratzenberger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, aka Ratzi the Nazi. Yes, I know his Hitler Yo… Read More
2022-12-30 15:30
Austin is Texas Monthly's Bum Steer for 2023. Related to that, the Observer notes the rent is too damned high for UT students. It's too damned high for anybody, for that matter, at $2,0… Read More
2022-12-29 18:09
The Observer's longform is informative, sad, scary, and hilarious in the sense to the the 2021 state constitutional amendment sent to the public by the Lege, over public health measures re… Read More
2022-12-29 16:12
Thanks to a library card at the nearest large library, I smashed my Goodreads reading challenge with room to spare. Take a look at what was on my list. I hit 130-plus books, with probably on… Read More
2022-12-28 15:30
Unlike nearly a decade ago, when the oily Kenny Boy Salazar ran the Department of the Interior, this time, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, whether current Comptroller Glenn Hegar was ba… Read More
2022-12-27 15:59
Plenty of talk from state-level and lower-level water folks 10 days ago, from all seven member states of the Colorado River Compact, in Las Vegas, but no action.Upper Basin states still want… Read More
2022-12-27 07:02
Yasmin Tayag at the Atlantic has a stark piece about the COVID death gap between Republicans and Democrats, with the biggest takeaway being how that gap INCREASED after the arrival of vaccin… Read More
2022-12-24 15:30
The Dallas Observer is Dallas-Fort Worth's alt-weekly, part of the (Village) Voice Media group. Its Dec. 1-7 issue (just 24 pages at about a 50 percent adhole, not counting house) had a… Read More
2022-12-22 18:38
At the Observer, Justin Miller looks at the options on statewide candidates now that Beat-0 is toast. And, I look at his looking.Congresscritter Joaquin Castro? Not gonna do it if he th… Read More
2022-12-20 19:19
Will Donna Howard's bill to do a narrow sexual assault carve-out to Texas' abortion law actually draw any GOP backers once it hits the light of day? Color me skeptical, though Joan Huffman… Read More
2022-12-20 15:39
Shock me Tony Tinder(holt) has hired a Christian nationalist as his legislative director.The White/non-White birth death gap remains high."Matthew Kascmaryk ruled X" should be saved in a mac… Read More
2022-12-19 15:00
I didn't realize that Yates, scion of THE Yates oil and gas plutocrats, had bought Española's Rio Grande Sun earlier this year. (Of course, it had been a semi-laughingstock itself l… Read More
2022-12-17 16:40
I blogged about six weeks ago how a majority of Americans want the US government to take the lead on starting Russia-Ukraine peace talks. Now, via Counterpunch, if not a majority, a signific… Read More
2022-12-16 18:53
I had a theme going with this week's roundup yesterday, so I decided to separate out non-hypocritical news items.Unionizing solar panel installers sounds like a great idea.Reform Austin flag… Read More
2022-12-15 19:34
That's per Politico, which discusses in more detail what it means.That's all while Politico (along with many other sites) breathlessly says "COVID cases are on the rise."They are, but per Wo… Read More
2022-12-15 15:00
For me, even seeing the Muskhole shithole that Twitter is becoming, it's nay.Because it was 6 years ago.I signed up shortly after it was launched and, like many new joiners are learning, fou… Read More
2022-12-14 18:28
Nuclear fusion has been "just around the corner" for decades, kind of like strong AI. Now, while strong AI photo-scrapping has become ever more a cause for concern and even alarm, overall, i… Read More
2022-12-14 15:00
I get Texas Department of Public Safety reports on fatal accidents from time to time and not just in my immediate area. Here's one from last month. A driver is westbound on US 80 near W… Read More
2022-12-13 19:43
Per all the talk, in Brittney Griner's release, about why Paul Whelan wasn't released, the issue of who Whelan might really be doesn't get directly touched, even though Wingnut Walrus John B… Read More
2022-12-13 15:00
Hypocrisy alert 1: Retiring bald-headed goon Kevin Brady blames social media for most of the divisiveness in modern politics while declining to look in the mirror.And 2: SocraticGadfly took… Read More
2022-12-12 18:51
Somebody alert Emptywheel, er Emptymind, her flunky BMaz I mean BPutz, other ex-Kossacks, or better, at least in his case, an ex-Kossasshole, and current general asshole, and BlueAnons in ge… Read More
2022-12-12 15:00
Senate Bill 8, the "sue the goddammed abortionists" bill, has had its scope dramatically narrowed by a state district judge tossing the lawsuit against its first target, Dr. Alan Braid, on s… Read More
2022-12-09 15:00
How's that for the ultimate in existentialism? Throwing in, if not a Nietschean eternal recurrence, then at least a hard feedback loop.It's a theme that I will likely explore more in bits an… Read More
2022-12-08 19:54
I didn't realize it was this bad, but it is. I'm extracting and updating this from some previous COVID-related posts involving Dr. Peter Hotez.I think it's a new version of Fauci's Platonic… Read More
2022-12-08 15:00
THIS:The CIA holds documents that show presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in an intelligence operation before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a prominent Kennedy assa… Read More
2022-12-07 15:00
Texas (shock me) is becoming a bitcoin haven, even encouraged by ERCOT. Despite all the dubiousness involved after Sam Bankman-Fried, I'm sure this won't slow down. Another issue: what if… Read More
2022-12-06 18:49
Team Biden (maybe in part the Deep State within DOJ, but the buck has to stop somewhere) refused to make publicly available documents on the legal negotiations re the Fisher private border… Read More
2022-12-06 15:00
I told Sandy Hook lawsuit filers they needed to get some sort of Alex Jones asset freeze into their cases. Now, his bankruptcy filing may not be actually granted, but ... Related: The… Read More
2022-12-06 04:43
As referenced in a piece by Scott Ritter earlier this week, here's her long and broad interview (English-language website version) with der Spiegel recently, which includes, but is not limit… Read More
2022-12-05 15:00
First, sorry for wingnuts in the Texas House, but since incumbent Dade Phelan won the GOP Caucus vote, which is, yes, nonbinding, he'll be back as Speaker. Tony Tinder-holt got all of six vo… Read More
2022-12-02 15:30
Older posts had the lead in most viewed stories for November, some signal-boosted by me, others not.An old blog post, from the end of Shrub Bush's first term, my blogging about the Dallas Sn… Read More
2022-12-01 20:11
Oxy, one of the big gas drillers even after an overpay merger with Anadarko, agreed to settle a lawsuit without admitting liability over massive gas flaring in the Carlsbad, New Mexico area… Read More
2022-12-01 20:04
Fascinating story, seen via Bruce Schneier.In the 1500s, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V/Spanish King Charles I had as his most vigorous foe Francis I, king of France. Francis was of course wor… Read More
2022-12-01 15:00
By OKing a shale oil export terminal, Warmonger Joe is also Climate Hypocrite Joe, of course. (Again.) Question: How many of the people who are disappointed that Biden is actually giving… Read More
2022-12-01 00:17
About a month ago, Pro Publica, working jointly with Vanity Fair, reported on a Senate committee's minority report on the latest work on the idea that coronavirus, as in SARS-CoVID-2, origin… Read More
2022-11-30 17:11
Sorry, or rather, "sorry," to Jeff St. Clair of Counterpunch, but contra your TweetIt was launched by the Bernie Bros & amplified by FoxNews and Assange (one of his less honorable moment… Read More
2022-11-28 19:00
The EU complains of Warmonger Joe's war profiteering off natural gas prices (while also attacking the Inflation Reduction Act as trade protectionism). Both are true, but? What are you goin… Read More
2022-11-28 14:52
I've written about this before, from the deductive side. Hegelian dialectic, in addition to being crappy philosophy, is pseudoscience by its very nature when made into the backbone of any sc… Read More
2022-11-25 16:16
Josh Simpkins at the Observer tries to spin a tale of Texas, and the South, as more bluish than is actually true. Most his anecdotes are undercut by reality. With Huckleberry J. Butchmeup… Read More
2022-11-23 15:13
First, yes, Warmonger Joe's Dems had about the best showing possible during midterms; that doesn't mean your turkey, and even more, your King's Hawaiian Rolls, don't cost more than last year… Read More
2022-11-22 15:00
Why does Warmonger Joe hate Brittney Griner? I mean, it's no secret that, allegedly, the Russians want Viktor Bout sprung. It's also no secret that the judge who presided over his conviction… Read More
2022-11-21 16:31
Time Magazine had three public health officials, one an academic, report on a new study about just how well masking works at schools. The horse is out the barn door on COVID, and I presume i… Read More
2022-11-18 15:00
So said ConservaDem de luxe Greg Summerlin on my 2022 election post-mortem, probably having come there from Kuff, where I'd posted it.I'm going to pull-quote the whole thing: To win future s… Read More
2022-11-17 19:46
Sam Husseini has the goods at Counterpunch about how the Ukrainian missile that landed in Poland became an allegedly Russian missile.A few key points.First, this is indeed bad journalism, as… Read More
2022-11-17 15:00
The Lege's Sunset Commission said TCEQ needs to get tougher on big and repeat offenders. It also needs to be pushed to follow through on the possibility of getting tougher on concrete batch… Read More
2022-11-16 17:41
The Trib notes that some suburban "collar counties" that had been trending more blueish reversed that trend. Fort Bend County was the biggest reverser, of counties it samples, followed by De… Read More
2022-11-15 15:22
I said two weeks ago that Joe Biden didn't want diplomacy in the Russia-Ukraine War. (He and the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ are probably, as old Cold Warriors, seeing analogies to Russia-Afghan… Read More
2022-11-14 15:00
Nationally, unlike Mark Lause and Brandy Baker, I held out slim hope after the 2016 election for the national party.The playout of the presidential nomination process, with Dario Hunter play… Read More
2022-11-12 15:00
Per an Aeon interview about a new book of his, the British philosopher has ideas that I would very largely agree with.His analogy with "Moby-Dick" is very good, as an introduction to the ide… Read More
2022-11-11 14:35
Beyond my blog post on Monday about the WSJ and Josh Barro's takes on Inflationmonger Joe's "look at those Republicans" pre-election speech, I'm extracting two things from my blog post on Tu… Read More
2022-11-10 19:19
Anti-abortion people will stop at nothing. They used a shell company to buy the Whole Women's Health building in McAllen. WWH had already shut down in Texas after the Supremes overturned Roe… Read More
2022-11-10 15:00
The XBB COVID variant is getting buzz. But, does it "deserve" that much buzz?It's a hybrid of two subvariants of Omicron. Supposedly, it's as antibody-evasive as the more distantly related c… Read More
2022-11-09 19:52
No, it's not national health care, but the House Republicans' Healthy Future Task Force has some ideas. And, at least some of them are good.Pushing hospitals to actually adhere to the Trump… Read More
2022-11-09 14:36
Depending on your font, the typographic pun in the header may not be clear, but it's a reference to the number of races Robert Francis O'Rourke has won in the last three elections.I mean, th… Read More
2022-11-08 17:46
Off the Kuff reviews the problem of Secretary of State John Scott again.SocraticGadfly describes a long-form piece in last week's NYT Magazine as nothing other than an attempt to revive "Rus… Read More
2022-11-08 14:42
Following up on my blogging last week about a long-form Texas Monthly piece, Bud Kennedy, arguably now the dean of Texas political columnists, notes that women and youth voters won't save De… Read More
2022-11-07 19:15
Actually, per Axios, it's Dear Leader's presidential pollster. Let's start here:Joel Benenson, the renowned pollster for President Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns, gave a first look at the r… Read More
2022-11-07 15:00
Joe Biden's recent election speech has been panned by people slightly to his left, such as Josh Barro, as well as the wingnut right.Now, the semi-wingnut, or sometime like a wingnut, sometim… Read More
2022-11-04 17:29
In fact, a bit of the old led top October blogging by readership in the top two spots.In No. 1, an old Shrub Bush era story, about the, er THE Dallas Morning News, aka the Snooze, pivoting r… Read More
2022-11-04 13:45
First, on the former. Iran is reportedly sending not only more drones but also short range ballistic missiles to Russia. As far as US tut-tutting over how this could affect revival of the Ir… Read More
2022-11-03 18:23
At the Times, Jim Rutenberg and assignment editors apparently think that readers, or perhaps rather, the target audience of Team Blue and .Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, haven't heard of the Mins… Read More
2022-11-03 14:02
Editorial note: This got bumped back a week because of breaking news over the lab-leak theory. People still concerned about the reality of COVID laughed and scorned a week or two ago when CD… Read More
2022-11-02 14:00
Ben Rowan has a great, long piece on how Texas Democrats' assumptions that non-voters are quiet hard tilters to Democrats simply isn't so true.First of all, this reminds me of parallel claim… Read More
2022-11-01 14:00
Will Tarrant County break further Democratic? True the Vote leaders found in contempt, could face jail time. And will.Here in Texas, and elsewhere, the IRS continues to turn a blind eye… Read More
2022-10-31 15:13
This is a moving snapshot, and an attempt to be a bit forward-looking, and a look at inflation overall. Different sectors will get a look in a bit of detail.Overall?Let's guesstimate:25 perc… Read More
2022-10-28 23:15
People like pseudoskeptic and tribalist deluxe Dr. David Gorski have LONG laughed and sneered at people like me who have said, citing people like Bill Clinton National Security Agency adviso… Read More
2022-10-28 14:00
In my previous blog post about the invasion and war, I noted that a majority of Americans want diplomacy. Almost 60 percent, even if it does NOT mean the status quo ante bellum for Ukr… Read More
2022-10-27 14:00
A dude named "Justice DuBois," whether a real name or a pseudonym riffing on W.E.B. DuBois (and sullying him), writes this howler for The Daily Texan, the "official newspaper" of (the Blue A… Read More
2022-10-26 19:03
Most of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, of which The Squad Fraud is a part, sent a letter to Warmonger Joe Monday asking him to push maybe just a tiny bit for negotiations on Ukraine… Read More
2022-10-26 14:00
SocraticGadfly has two strategery thoughts related to the midterms nationally, namely that neither inflation whataboutism of the Pelosi stripe, nor "But Republicans" (and the implied "Only R… Read More
2022-10-25 14:00
Steve McCraw has thrown the first DPS trooper under the bus over Uvalde. The DPS head has yet to say if larger DPS instructional problems were any part of the cause for someone like Sgt. Ju… Read More
2022-10-25 00:31
That's the claim of a new poll from Beacon Research posted today, that claims Beto-Bob, aka Robert Francis O'Rourke, is within 3 percentage points of Greg Abbott, and 2 percentage points amo… Read More
2022-10-24 18:48
This will incorporate reflections on the polls at right, and also build on my "Gadfly slate" of last Friday.First, here in Tex-ass, statewide offices.I'm not yet ready to say Strangeabbott's… Read More
2022-10-24 14:00
Well, that's not the only reason, but that's a good starting point for why Greg Abbott, aka Strangeabbott, is up 11 points among likely voters in the Texas gov's race vs. Beto O'Rourke, aka… Read More
2022-10-22 15:00
Unlike other current or former members of Texas Progressives, namely, Kuff, Stace and Brains, I haven't regularly done my set of endorsements. And, where I live at now, there's damned l… Read More
2022-10-21 22:16
New inflation concerns, thanks to the latest OPEC cuts, plus tight diesel stocks, which will likely minimize Warmonger Joe's latest effort to battle inflation, and which the Inflation Reduc… Read More
2022-10-21 14:00
Such is the thesis of this UnHerd piece, which makes me wonder yet more what I saw in the site when I signed up for updates. (An "updates" subscription, BTW, does NOT grant commenting privil… Read More
2022-10-20 19:05
Yes, I am aware of why the FDA et al put pause on the J and J vax. Were the very occasionally fatal clotting side effects that much more serious than the very occasional cardiomyopathy side… Read More
2022-10-20 14:00
Yes, President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he would release more crude from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to counter OPEC+ announcing cuts in production last week, and yes, o… Read More
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