This past weekend produced some exquisite musical moments. First, I participated in the four December Rose concerts at the MATCH with International Voices Houston. (Yeah, henceforth I'll remember to promote our shows on this here blog.) It was a joy to present a mix of overt holiday music, implicit holiday music, and music about persisting through adversity that has little or nothing to do with the December holidays.
Second, there was the music on the sound system Saturday morning at Generic Kroger: It was all bland pop Christmas tunes, except somehow the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" started up just after we walked into the store. Maybe "Blitzkrieg Bop" is a Christmas song now, like "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie?
On with the bloggage.
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Off the Kuff posted some extremely long and boring spreadsheets full of statistics that nobody except a few political consultants in Harris County could possibly give a shit about.
SocraticGadfly took a skeptical look at the Betomania 2020 Kool-Aid, one of dozens of articles about the phenomenon that shows no sign of ebbing. O'Rourke himself has marveled at his rock star hysteria, teasingly suggesting "it's a great question" whether he is ready for a run at the White House. As he rose in the early polling, many Democratic activists began questioning his progressive bona fides. (You will recall that PDiddie answered that for himself last January.) The NYT dug out--and published in October--the story behind his family's shady real estate deal in El Paso, and the Segundo Barrio residents who never forgot his role in it.
PDiddie at Brains and Eggs exposed the oozing neoliberalism of Houston mayor Sylvester Turner in two posts: the first excoriating his interference in the developments surrounding HISD's legacy African American schools; the second, reminding Houstonians of the only consistent talents Turner has demonstrated over the last three years: his leadership void and political courage deficit.
Democratic infighting over whether to monetize voter data for 2020 spilled out into the open.
.@DNC Chair @TomPerez goes to war with state parties over voter data https://t.co/Gr6Zhe4QBm @HinojosaTX: what's your response? @TexasDemocrats #DNC #ToShareOrToSell #ThatistheQuestion #CapitalismOrSocialism #IstheLargerQuestion
— More Powerful Than Putin (@PDiddie) December 16, 2018