Rick Perry vs World

23 March 2007

Chisum interview

The Texas Public Policy Foundation has an interview with House Appropriations Chair Warren Chisum about the budget.

Posted by Evan @ 03/23/07 01:04 AM | Comments (0)

22 March 2007

Which way will he vote?

Michelle Mittelstadt writes for the Chron on the Texas Democrats who are considering voting with a small group of strident liberals who are trying to bring down Pelosi's bill:

As the House edges toward a showdown with the White House over Iraq, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has been among the band of Democrats resisting her party's leadership-backed bill setting a fall 2008 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops.

She's been summoned to a one-on-one meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., lobbied by the party's vote-mustering "whip" organization and dealt with telephone calls from constituents on all sides of the issue.

...

Several members close to the leadership predicted that Rep. Lloyd Doggett, of Austin, would be the sole Texas Democrat voting against the bill, which many liberals fret doesn't move quickly enough to bring the troops home. Doggett's office offered no comment.

Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Stafford, was still weighing his vote. "He is still going to wait until there's firm movement to bring it to the floor and then there's debate, and then to see what happens to that accordingly," said spokesman Bobby Zafarnia.

Doggett, Sheila!, and...Lampson all considering voting with the uber-liberals in the House.

Wait, I thought Lampson ran as a moderate? I bet he'll end up voting for the leadership's bill. If he votes against the leadership's bill, it'll be interesting to see if he tries to play it as too anti-war. That sounds like something he might do.

Posted by Evan @ 03/22/07 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

It all goes back to the 98 coup

Todd Gillman does Texas' former congressional leaders:

"People retire from Congress and they basically write a book that says, 'I was a true and honest, hardworking, honorable guy and everybody around me was a bunch of slugs,' " Mr. Armey said when asked about [DeLay's] critique.

Heh.

The DeLay book devotes relatively little space to Mr. Armey and does include some praise. Recounting the genesis of the 10-point "Contract with America" that helped Republicans win in 1994, Mr. DeLay writes that "I believe Dick Armey first proposed it," and added that "I have to give Dick Armey credit" for rounding up GOP support.

There's a deeply unflattering portrayal of Mr. Armey's role in the 1997 effort to depose Mr. Gingrich.

Both Texans had met secretly with rank-and-file members plotting the ouster. Mr. Armey ended up exposing the plot, and Mr. DeLay accuses him of lying by portraying Mr. DeLay's role as more active than it was. In his view, Mr. Armey was angling for the speakership but "few respected Armey" and many "didn't trust him."

Lots of stories have been told about the aborted coup in 98, but I don't think the story has ever been well told.

I remember Maraniss reported that Newt used to threaten Clinton in 95 that if Clinton didn't make a deal with Newt, Clinton would find it more difficult to deal with a Speaker Armey.

Posted by Evan @ 03/22/07 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

21 March 2007

Obama fires Hillary 1984 video creator

Hillary 1984 video author revealed:

The mystery creator of the Orwellian YouTube ad against Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic operative who worked for a digital consulting firm with ties to rival Sen. Barack Obama. Philip de Vellis, a strategist with Blue State Digital, acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that he was the creator of the video, which portrayed Clinton as a Big Brother figure and urged support for Obama's presidential campaign.

De Vellis said he resigned from the firm on Wednesday after he learned that he was about to be unmasked by the HuffingtonPost.com., a liberal news and opinion Internet site.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, the Obama campaign said:

"The Obama campaign and its employees had no knowledge and had nothing to do with the creation of the ad. We were notified this evening by a vendor of ours, Blue State Digital, that an employee of the company had been involved in the making of this ad. Blue State Digital has separated ties with this individual and we have been assured he did no work on our campaign's account."

How about a different kind of presidential campaign: one where the candidate doesn't fire people [who aren't even in his campaign!] for coming up with a fantastic and funny clip.

If Obama is so different, I'd have liked to see him reward the guy, even if only with a compliment. I guess he's afraid of being called 'negative' after the recent Geffen dustup.

Posted by Evan @ 03/21/07 11:59 PM | Comments (2)

P joins the navy

W's nephew George P. Bush is joining the Navy Reserves as an intelligence officer.

Bush, 30, said in a telephone interview from his office at a real estate development firm in Fort Worth, Texas, that he was moved to join the service in part when he attended the rainy commissioning in October of the aircraft carrier named for his grandfather -- the USS George H.W. Bush.

"My grandfather's my hero, and what really sold me on the ultimate decision was having the chance to see the CVN-77 be commissioned under his name," he said. "That was pretty moving, and I had a chance to meet some Navy admirals, as well. I had a chance to talk to them briefly about the opportunity, and I was won over."

George Prescott Bush, the oldest son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said the death of Pat Tillman, the NFL player and Army Ranger who was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 in what was later determined to be a friendly-fire incident, "was a wake-up call for me." He said he even "looked into active duty" and had somber conversations with his wife about the possibility.

Bush said he had not intended to announce his plans. "Honestly, I'm kind of a little disappointed that the word got out," he said. "I was hoping to keep this as confidential as possible. I'm not doing it for political purposes or anything along those lines. I'm just doing it because I've been inspired by the friends of mine that have served, either through the JAG (military law) program or through the Reserves. I thought this was a small way that I could get involved."

Perry was the first Aggie governor of Texas. P might be the first Rice Owl governor -- though obviously that's still a ways away. 8 years at least.

But good for him. I thought seriously in the past year or so about joining the Army. However, I'd have needed a few waivers just to apply to OCS. I couldn't take the uncertainty of putting so much work into the process, so I declined to pursue it further. I'm jealous.

Posted by Evan @ 03/21/07 06:27 PM | Comments (0)

Citizen K Street

The Washington Post has a pretty interesting series going about former McGovern aide Gerry Cassidy, who helped invent the modern-day congressional appropriations lobbyist.

I guess you can blame him for all the earmarks.

Posted by Evan @ 03/21/07 11:54 AM | Comments (0)

Rove vs. W

Via Michael Barone, Michael Novak buries in a column:

The one tid-bit I picked up prior to the lunch, and confirmed at the meeting, is that the president and Karl Rove are competing to see who can read the most books during 2007. For the first six weeks, the President was ahead. But by the beginning of March, Rove had surged ahead to twenty books, to the President's sixteen. Just to make sure that no one cheats, Rove also keeps track of the number of pages and the number of lines per page.

I guess Rove just wasn't that busy in the latter half of February.

Posted by Evan @ 03/21/07 11:50 AM | Comments (2)

20 March 2007

Latest SurveyUSA Cornyn and Hutchison poll numbers

Hutchison
Approve/Disapprove: 59/32

Cornyn
Approve/Disapprove: 47/39.
Considering that he's only 63/25 among Republicans in this survey, the only place to go is up. Interestingly, the place where he is closest to KBH's number is in Hispanics.*

3/9-3/11. 600 adults (not RVs or LVs), MoE +/- 4.1%

Crosstabs here. Keep in mind that subsamples may lack accuracy.

* That may be an aberration: in the previous SUSA approval poll, the numbers were divergent.

Posted by Evan @ 03/20/07 06:29 PM | Comments (0)

Willie must be happy

John Porretto, AP:

Using the slimy, light-colored tallow as the source for clean-burning biodiesel, Biofuels Power Corp. flipped the switch on three, 2,000-horsepower diesel engines a couple of weeks ago, adding a bit more energy to the massive grid that powers much of the Lone Star State.

Privately held Biofuels Power and others in the renewable energy business say the plant is the first of its kind to produce power for sale on the open market using only biodiesel, a petroleum-free alternative fuel made from plant oils like cotton seed and animal fat — in this case, chicken fat.

For now, Biofuels Power's contribution to Texas' energy supply is a mere blip. Its new plant in [The Woodlands] has the capacity to generate 5 megawatts of power. Crimmins said that translates into roughly enough juice to power 3,500 homes, though the number can vary widely depending on the size of the home and the time of day and year.

But the plant doesn't run around the clock; the idea is to create power for times of the day when demand is greatest — and prices are highest. Like other power generators, Biofuels Power uses a registered agent to sell the power on the open market. The price of a kilowatt of electricity can sell for as little 2 cents when demand is low to 65 cents or more at peak times.

Neat; they plan another plant in Texas soon. I wonder how much of their profit is government subsidy. Some friends of mine are grad students working on extracting more diesel out of fats. I think I'll send this to them and see if they have any pithy comments. Anyway, I excerpted quite heavily. Read the whole thing.

Posted by Evan @ 03/20/07 06:14 PM | Comments (0)

Why I'm posting

So the reason I've had time to post these past few days is that I'm sick.

But I think I'm going to suck it up and head into the office tomorrow. There's a free lunch, and I'm a sucker for that.

Posted by Evan @ 03/20/07 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

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