Welcome Kibitzers! Yes, tonight the plumber will be setting the table. Please check seats for errant forks.
You may wonder why I’m guest hosting on a Wednesday. Well, tonight is a special night at KTK: it’s nomandates's birthday! You can imagine how excited I was to be asked to host. Actually, you will need to imagine since I was strictly forbidden from turning this into a mushy, fanboy tribute to my all-time favorite kossack. So, no mention will be made of all the great work done here by the prickly one, such as when she, a new user herself, started the New Diarist group to help new users; or her work with The Inoculation Project providing school supplies for poor red-state students. You will not read here about the many hours she spent behind the scenes organizing with the Okiciyap group, or the other numerous blogathons supporting great causes. Nowhere in this diary will you see me making any claims that I cherish the ground in which the cactus grows; that would be too mushy.
So, follow me below the crazy, curly cactus.
As we try to wrest control back from the teabaggers, a few key battleground states come to mind, but none bigger than Texas. Our friend, nomandates, covered the rise of State Senator Wendy Davis live-blogging Davis’s historic filibuster of SB5. Now that Sen. Davis announced her run for governor, out-of-state money will be pouring in to defeat her, but she has the passion, stamina, and grassroots support to turn Texas’s highest office blue.
Last night, voters in Pasadena, TX passed Prop. 1, another devious example of what the Republicans are willing to do to distort the will of the people. By a slim 87 votes this insidious new redistricting law was implemented. Designed to disenfranchise Latino voters by eliminating two city council districts, they will now be turned into citywide offices.
After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, once-covered cities had the opportunity to prove that pre-clearance requirements were an outdated relic of a racist past. Instead of relying on U.S. Justice Department supervision to ensure that minority voting rights were not abridged, local politicians could work with communities and build coalitions to find solutions that are right for everyone. That isn't what's happening in Pasadena. Instead, Mayor Johnny Isbell is exploiting the lack of federal supervision to push forward the exact same redistricting plan that the Department of Justice had blocked a few years ago as potentially discriminatory.
There is no need for mid-decade redistricting in Pasadena, least of all with a plan that has been dug out of the trash
Houston Chronicle
Turning Texas blue will be no easy task and as the above story shows no trick is too dirty for the Republicans.
In lieu of cards and gifts, let’s support Wendy Davis’s campaign. I am sending a few bucks in nomandates's name to: Team Wendy
I can't send a gift anyway. She won’t give me her home address, when I asked for it she called me a stalker.
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This is going to be a fun election to follow...
h/t to varii
Now that she’s declared she is running for governor of the Lone Star State, the Harvard Law-educated Davis has done it again.
“I am pro-life,” she told a University of Texas at Brownsville crowd on Tuesday. “I care about the life of every child: every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, every child that goes to bed without being able to be a part of the Texas dream, every woman and man who worry about their children’s future and their ability to provide for that future. I care about life and I have a record of fighting for people above all else.”
“This isn’t about protecting abortion,” Davis explained in the same appearance. “It’s about protecting women. It’s about trusting women to make good decisions for themselves and empowering them with the tools to do that.”
The National Memo
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate.
Finally, readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.