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
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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
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
2022-10-19 19:06
Saw this piece tweeted by Molly Jong-Fast, talking about how a number of House Republicans have already indicated they plan to hold Neoliberal Joe hostage over the debt ceiling being hit aga… Read More
2022-10-19 15:36
I've been to Luckenbach once, a little over a decade ago, when I lived in Marble Falls, and spent a whole weekend touring the heart of the Hill Country. Even then, the surrounding area proba… Read More
2022-10-18 14:00
Loonbat Laura Pressley lost another voting non-fraud suit. She's lost so many, with a perfect record, I wonder why a judge won't sanction one of her lawyers, or her personally even though no… Read More
2022-10-17 14:00
Beto-Bob has slightly more money than Strangeabbott. But, he's only very slightly narrowed the polls and remains well outside the margin of error.Add in that his "let's go to Muleshoe" lunac… Read More
2022-10-14 14:20
Here's the reality behind that 3.5 percent September unemployment rate that she breathlessly pushed:Employers added 263,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. It was the s… Read More
2022-10-13 14:00
Kaiser Health News, an outlet of the Kaiser Family Foundation, representing a hospital biz that ain't exactly small potatoes, raised that issue relatively recently.I included the link, witho… Read More
2022-10-12 19:03
I mean, just a year after the Cardinals fired Mike Shildt, they're not firing Oliver Marmol, his replacement as manager. Other than being a good yes-man to John Mozeliak and Mike Girsch on p… Read More
2022-10-12 04:30
In announcing she was leaving the Democraps, Tulsi Gabbard did not say whether she would become a true Independent, a Rethuglican, a capital-L Libertarian, or a Green. (This ex-Green shudder… Read More
2022-10-11 14:00
I had said on Twitter, just before they got results, that protestors camped out at Uvalde ISD admin building needed to pull back and consider other tactics if this wasn't working, rather tha… Read More
2022-10-10 14:32
Two biggest advantages?Not owned by the Yellow Satan of Amazon, and offers half-star, even quarter-star, reviews. And, speaking of, if Amazon's going to treat you like the Mafia for reportin… Read More
2022-10-08 15:30
I blogged after the 2021 season that Shohei Ohtani was no Babe Ruth. I said, let's see you do it again.With the big news of Ohtani officially "qualifying" as both a pitcher and batter, ie, m… Read More
2022-10-07 14:30
NPR and Marist polled people who said they "definitely plan to vote," on Warmonger Joe, the generic national Congressional ballot and the midterms. There are wake-up calls for #BlueAnon stil… Read More
2022-10-06 14:00
People like Walker Bragman on Twitter, and Gregg Gonsalves for the Nation, insist we're not in a post-pandemic world.What if they're wrong? What if we're at least "getting there"?In other wo… Read More
2022-10-05 14:00
SocraticGadfly talks about Judge Pitman screwing over third-party candidates in Texas.The Fifth Circuit (shock me) said that MALDEF et al don't have standing to sue the Texas SoS over its li… Read More
2022-10-04 14:30
An OPEC+ oil production cut is coming right up, reports say.This benefits two countries: Saudi Arabia, the leader of OPEC, and Russia, the +.The Russian benefits are obvious: Increased pain… Read More
2022-10-03 14:00
The nuclear industry will keep trying to tell you that, after that nuke plant is built, nuclear power is carbon-neutral. Not.Even.Wrong., as Counterpunch explains in high detail. They don't… Read More
2022-10-01 16:56
First, there's an "influencer" asking for help for her family in Fort Myers. I did count, if not to 10, at least to 7 before offering the following quote tweet, which I then counted to… Read More
2022-09-30 16:18
And, everybody knows they DID, but, per Wiki and others, it's fallen off the cliff. Let's start with the nice big graphic Wiki has from Stat Counter. It is only through 2020, so no… Read More
2022-09-29 23:53
Per the federal lawsuit filed by Texas Libertarians, Texas Greens, and other third parties and independent candidates in 2019, blogged about by me at the time, in depth, here ...U.S. Distric… Read More
2022-09-29 14:00
Not just the Goldlocks Three Bears of Hank the Knife Kissinger, the NYT editorial board, and duopoly leftist Noam Chomsky, at all of whom many #BlueAnon / #TeamBlue / #VoteBlueNoMatterWho th… Read More
2022-09-28 14:30
And that's beyond their tilt toward wingnuts and disinformation.Rather, it's about Substack as a medium.The first, that I only realized a couple of weeks ago, is that you can't block people… Read More
2022-09-27 14:00
SocraticGadfly talks about "vaccine losers" as the new "bivalent" boosters roll out. == Off the Kuff published interviews with Democratic Congressional candidates Robin Fulford and Laur… Read More
2022-09-26 23:38
Unless you're living under an international geopolitical rock, you know that, earlier today, Merikkkan time, Vladimir Putin offered Edward Snowden Russian citizenship. That said, while Putin… Read More
2022-09-26 15:36
Last week, I blogged about Slick Willie's famous phrase, how it's true at the grocery store as well as the gas pump, and in the case of the grocery store, Warmonger Joe and Team Blue don't w… Read More
2022-09-23 18:28
I don't often post reviews to Amazon, but occasionally, when a new book is so new there's been little good or bad, or if it's bad and way overhyped, even if there's been massive reviews, I w… Read More
2022-09-22 18:25
That, in the header, is the claim of Russian ultranationalist Igor Girkin. He's pessimistic about the war so far, thinks Putin's been lying to the Russian people about some problems, and wan… Read More
2022-09-22 14:00
I remember that, more than a year ago, people more knowledgeable than me in fields like immunlogy and even more importantly, warned there would be vaccine losers as well as winners as the ra… Read More
2022-09-21 17:24
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles continues to politicize the case of George Floyd.Let's assume that Strangeabbott and DeSatan are indeed engaged in human trafficking, by criminal law d… Read More
2022-09-21 13:56
First, it took me four years later than Mark Lause, but I too have reached the point that I see the Green Party nationally being past its best-by date. I was already having doubts in 2016 ov… Read More
2022-09-20 18:04
Tensions, not just over the Robb Elementary shooting, but fanned yet further by it, are splitting Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Uvalde, whose own history reflects Anglo-Hispanic tensions… Read More
2022-09-20 13:50
Warmonger Joe Biden may be touting inflation being on hold in July, and will surely soon tout falling gas prices in August.Not so fast, starting with the fact that the Consumer Price Index w… Read More
2022-09-19 17:45
Kenny Boy Paxton cannot investigate any member of PFLAG after a new court ruling.Per my non-twosider thoughts on transsexualism and transgenderism, starting with the fact that sex isn't gend… Read More
2022-09-19 14:00
Rall called abortion "killing" more than a decade ago, and said the pro-choice world should embrace that while reframing larger moral issues.At first, I thought he was onto something, but I… Read More
2022-09-17 15:00
Yes, with Zionist settlements in Palestine, apartheid and Lebensraum are two words that go hand in hand, especially when the Israeli Offense Force, I'm sorry, officially the IDF, goes full O… Read More
2022-09-16 19:08
See Part 1 for some background to this. I had seen Jessica Wildfire's Substack several months ago, I think after I first saw her on Medium, and eventually clicked to get it.A solidly middle… Read More
2022-09-16 18:23
I have broken what was originally going to be just one piece about the "OK Doomer" of Substack, Jessica Wildfire / Jessica Lexicus, into two. The background reason is the same; her thin-skin… Read More
2022-09-15 22:52
Warmonger Joe, as the European Union fears freezing its gonads off this winter, has talked about a liquified natural gas "bailout" for it. The Financial Times notes that could backfire at ho… Read More
2022-09-15 13:28
Contra the Great Barrington folks and other COVID deniers, minimalists and truth-distorters, the US, and most countries in the world, have not had a zero-COVID policy and never had.China, th… Read More
2022-09-14 18:53
Geez, over the last two weeks, I do a non-takedown but critical obit of Gorbachev, then another one, also non-takedown but critical, over Barbara Ehrenreich, then a takedown of the House of… Read More
2022-09-14 14:10
Elizabeth Warren asked for it, then got called out as "fascist" for the request, but Visa will start tracking gun sales as a particular category. It should make it easier to track down suspi… Read More
2022-09-13 18:00
Only listing nine posts this month instead of the usual 10. By the time I had gotten around to this on Sept. 3, my Sept. 2 Barbara Ehrenreich obit had already jumped into the top 10. And, I'… Read More
2022-09-13 14:00
As the Chronic chronicled last week, among part of Beto-Bob O'Rourke's attempt to get rural Texas votes is straight-up economic pandering.No shit, sherlock, on the idea that Muleshoe teacher… Read More
2022-09-12 18:12
Last week, I posted what was not so much, or even close to being, a takedown obit on Elizabeth (though it kind of was on the House of Windsor) as it was a takedown of Americans' weird "royal… Read More
2022-09-12 14:00
Just when I think AOC can't "do it again," she can indeed. In a longform GQ interview with Wesley Lowry, she says this about a rape of several years ago that she started discussing after the… Read More
2022-09-09 18:37
Going by Twitter, a fair number of British people (probably greater in Northern Ireland and Scotland than England) and lots of "Black Twitter" no matter the country, said "good bye and good… Read More
2022-09-08 18:00
James Dorsey has a great piece on all the moving parts involved with a possible renewal of the Iran nuclear deal. Beyond the US, Western allies, Russia and China, it also includes the Gulf A… Read More
2022-09-08 14:00
The Trib notes the Texas housing market is cooling down. It should, and should be cooling even faster than it is. When Austin, less than a year ago, was charging California housing prices, i… Read More
2022-09-07 17:58
No, seriously, Shrub Bush reference and all.Why is Beto-Bob doubling down on his 2018 strategery (sic) of chasing diminishing numbers of overall overall voters in hardcore rural red-dom? Es… Read More
2022-09-06 14:00
Contributing editor Jonathan Thompson, with whom I battled before in the past, when he was an in-house editor and HCN stopped running the likes of Jeff St. Clair, Jim Stiles and Felice Pace… Read More
2022-09-05 19:31
Many of us left-liberals and leftists who are on salary not wage have to work today because our locations, or our job and career fields are among those most hit by the Great Resignation or w… Read More
2022-09-03 17:55
Via Twitter, per son Ben, she died Thursday.We'll start with the good, then get into the semi-bad, with the sad at the end of that, then into the full bad (and it is) based on some late Goog… Read More
2022-09-02 17:29
I've decided to, on my own, do a "world" version of Texas Progressives on occasion. Kuff rarely reaches beyond Texas and never goes beyond US borders for stories he adds, and sometimes, I fi… Read More
2022-09-01 17:36
Long read for the wingnuts from Unherd: Dick Cheney "created" Anthony Fauci by, in his post 9/11 worries about biodefense, putting a number of fragmented agencies under the aegis of NIAID… Read More
2022-09-01 14:00
Zeynep Tufekci, in her first Substack piece in some time, and linking to and extracting from a recent NYT column by her, talks about the medical stubbornness and tribalism. She begins by not… Read More
2022-08-31 20:15
This from American Indians, not Hispanics, unlike yesterday's, but another semi-self own, woke-related, this one also at HCN. Start here:Biyáál is just one of many farmers in… Read More
2022-08-31 14:30
Keller ISD has reported a monkeypox case. Rethuglican vote suppressors were at it again. This time, it was not minority or poor voters. Instead it was what it and Democraps both try to… Read More
2022-08-31 05:05
The last leader of the old Soviet Union is dead at 92.Was he a tragic figure, as Council on Foreign Relations lifer Mary Elise Sarotte talks about in "Not One Inch," a deep book about German… Read More
2022-08-30 18:33
To put it another way, Democraps are running SO FEW (how few?) candidates for state House and Senate seats that the state AFL-CIO has felt compelled to endorse more than 25 Libertarians in h… Read More
2022-08-30 14:11
HCN dove deep into the wokeness with its most recent email, with a "Sunday comics" sized graphic mini-novella about white privilege and the outdoors with words by José González… Read More
2022-08-29 18:13
Specifically, zombie ice from Greenland, which the AP notes is ice still theoretically attached to a glacier but no longer being "charged" by it, will cause this.The real issue is that this… Read More
2022-08-27 15:00
County Attorney Ed Zielinksi presented the same video I have in this blog post about the actual 2020 protest, during the trial on misdemeanor charges of group leaders Torrey Henderson, Amara… Read More
2022-08-26 14:12
The cesspool that Political Twitter often is had this Tweet Wednesday when "Communism" was trending:Fascists: Communism is fascism. Liberals: Communism is fascism.Communists: We defeated Hit… Read More
2022-08-25 14:00
As most people know, Dollar Tree is now Buck Twenty-Five Tree on most of its stuff.Well, scratch that.The one nearest me, and presumably this is national, now has most of two aisles devoted… Read More
2022-08-25 13:28
So alleges its brief cybersecurity chief, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, in a massive whistleblower filing with the feds, as reported by CNN. Hat tip to Schneier, where I found this.REALLY sux. Zatko… Read More
2022-08-24 14:00
Off the Kuff comments on the resignations of Gillespie County's elections staff and the shameful silence of the Republicans whose words and deeds are the root cause of the problem. Socr… Read More
2022-08-23 17:35
First, the backstory to this.In the one candidate forum held before the March primary, after the Winter Storm Uri wannabe of this year led Cooke County Republican Women to cancel their event… Read More
2022-08-23 14:00
I put the "no really" in scare quotes because, no, really, they're not, or at a minimum, there's no proof that they are, outside the obvious way, in which if you're parents with kids and wan… Read More
2022-08-22 14:08
For those not following the news in the Desert Southwest, the Bureau of Reclamation's announcement last week that it was putting the three lower Colorado River Basin states of Arizona, Calif… Read More
2022-08-19 14:00
And, I mean that literally. Several times on my recent trip, in both Colorado and New Mexico, I saw dogs off-leash in federal wilderness areas. Even if not posted (it wasn't in Lizard H… Read More
2022-08-18 13:16
Between the mix of population density, sucky vaccines, and the resulting deaths of more than 2 million people, Xi Jinping seems stuck on total lockdowns when coronavirus "surges" or even "mi… Read More
2022-08-17 18:09
Yes, Texas has its equivalent of Never Trumpers, and they're exemplified by the Mothers Against Greg Abbott PAC, which like the Project Lincoln of Rick Wilson and other Never Trumper Republi… Read More
2022-08-17 14:26
I had heard about this while on vacation, and remembered to Google when I got home.Sadly, the Daily Caller is the most read and least wingnut of the top search results from both Google and D… Read More
2022-08-16 14:25
SocraticGadfly saw the obits news last week, and immediately remembered Michael Badnarik as "Mr. Driving Without a License," and gave the 2004 Libertarian presidential nominee a "proper salu… Read More
2022-08-15 17:07
Chris Hooks talks about Texas Rethuglicans' reaction to the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, and their following non-reaction, so far, to the attack on the FBI's Cincinnati office. (Or to Trump's a… Read More
2022-08-13 15:30
Since I used to do this as part of the day job at one newspaper group, I'm qualified. Not sure why I haven't been blogging reviews of vacation car rentals before, but better late than never… Read More
2022-08-12 18:32
Ballot Access News alerted me yesterday to the death of the 2004 Libertarian Party presidential candidate, and what's in the header was what I immediately thought about because that's what h… Read More
2022-08-12 14:58
As we look at the career of Albert Pujols, aka Phat Albert, aka The Machine, and his announced retirement after this year, although he has said he doesn't care about counting marks, where wi… Read More
2022-08-11 14:00
New Mexico, a blue(ish) state, may be a haven, or heaven, for liberal Texas women seeking abortion in a post-Dobbs world, but that's about all it is.Having grown up in Gallup, I know whereof… Read More
2022-08-10 20:04
As of late July, despite attempts to downplay it, and to downplay the concerns of Ukrainian-born Congresscritter Victoria Spartz, Warmonger Joe and the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ are STILL co… Read More
2022-08-10 13:49
SocraticGadfly offers a mini-roundup of thoughts on several recent Texas news items: Three Percenters, Alex Jones, TxDOT and Ike Dike. Off the Kuff has updates on the voter purge lawsui… Read More
2022-08-10 03:40
Orac, David Gorski. He's not a pseudoskeptic in the way that Michael Shermer is, confusing libertarianism with skepticism.He IS a pseudoskeptic in confusing tribalism with skepticism, though… Read More
2022-08-10 02:44
Are Muslim men being targeted for murder in Albuquerque? Color me a little bit more skeptical than the Albuquerque Journal reporting, or the Albuquerque PD, which because of being under a co… Read More
2022-08-06 15:53
I'd never had Santorelli until earlier this week. It pushes a number of stylish varieties, but I had never found it on sale into I bought one of its smaller 7-ounce packs of "Heritage Chedda… Read More
2022-08-04 18:35
Here's a pretty good piece here reminding us all that, contra the Rainier Sheas and other alleged Socialists and Communists in Merika, it's capitalism — crony capitalism, of course… Read More
2022-08-04 13:44
A number of people who still are following the Russia-Ukraine war and its global spill-out may have noticed last week that the European Union voted to (try to) cut natural gas usage by 15 pe… Read More
2022-08-03 23:45
Wylie's Guy Reffert, described as a ringleader of stirring up Jan. 6 insurrectionist, now has his reward. It's seven years in the federal stir. Looks like sentences are getting tougher. Unf… Read More
2022-08-03 14:00
Off the Kuff writes again and again and again about the chaotic legal landscape we find ourselves in following the Dobbs decision.SocraticGadfly, fresh off vacation to parts of the Southwest… Read More
2022-08-02 19:17
I wrote the following poem last month, and posted it on my second blog, since I discuss issues of aesthetics there, including some of my own poems, as well as philosophy, critical religion a… Read More
2022-08-01 18:24
I was on vacation and just now hit civilization.The Texas Progressive Alliance is ready for the Former Guy to be charged with some crimes as it brings you this week's roundup. Off the K… Read More
2022-07-30 17:58
I've blogged before many times about the difference between sex and gender, the problems with puberty-blocker medications, their over-prescription and prescription outside of guidelines reco… Read More
2022-07-29 18:54
Three Tweets will tell you where I'm coming from:First this:Sooo ... the DC Statehood Green Party can't get anybody to run for Congress https://t.co/pPSlZaPjYq .... but DOES have two (cheesy… Read More
2022-07-27 13:09
Yes, six.Per Ballotpedia, they are:Greg Abbott, RBeto O'Rourke, DMark Tippetts, LDelilah Barrios, GRicardo Turullols-Bonilla, IActually, that's just five. No. 6, per ME, having done it befor… Read More
2022-07-25 16:45
A year ago, I blogged about the first water cuts the Bureau of Reclamation announced for the Lower Colorado River states of Arizona, Nevada and California — and on this first round, ma… Read More
2022-07-22 14:12
I'm taking vacation in a couple of weeks.Got my plane tickets some time ago, then, over rental car prices at my original destination (a possible domino effect from the Yellowstone floods) wo… Read More
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