John Fogerty at Fred Baron's

As I mentioned in a previous post, I attended the terrific holiday party hosted every year by Fred Baron and Lisa Blue in Dallas. About 1500 people attended and had a great time. The headlineers this year were Eric Burdon and the Animals and John Fogerty and his band. Terrific music, much appreciated by the guests.

Here's a picture of John Fogerty. You can see more of my pictures of the evening here.

Have You Ever Seen Dallas ... ?

I am in Dallas this morning, having attended Fred Baron and Lisa Blue's fabulous annual holiday party. Featured entertainment: Eric Burdon and the Animals, and John Fogerty and his band. More on that later.

Because it was in the 80s in Austin yesterday, I was dressed cool and casual and had the windows open on Sage the Explorer. Coming into the Metroplex, I hit a wall of cool air, the leading edge of the cool front that's now covering most of Texas. In about five minutes, the outside temperature dropped from 79 to 67! It's not often you experience a 12-degree swing in the temperature that quickly, and it was pretty cool.

Zod in 2008

Finally, a presidential candidate we can get behind ... or else! Check it out.

Bush vs. Reagan

Taegan Goddard's PoliticalWire today highlights a poll of likely Iowa caucus voters about the presidential candidates. But I was fascinated by a batch of questions and answers that had nothing to do (or maybe everything to do) with the 2008 elections. Here are the questions and the results (from 600 likely Republican caucus voters):

2. Do you see President George W. Bush as a conservative Republican in the mode of Ronald Reagan? (Republicans Only)

Yes 7%

No 74%

Undecided 19%

3. How important is it for the Republican presidential candidate to be a conservative Republican in the mode of Ronald Reagan: very important, somewhat important, not very important, not important, or undecided? (Republicans Only)

Very Important 51%

Somewhat Important 16%

Not Very Important 6%

Not Important 14%

Undecided 13%

Ronald Reagan is the closest thing to a Saint the modern GOP has, and so he's held up as the standard against which everyone else is measured. In this survey, 67% believe it's important to a GOP presidential candidate to be like Reagan. So, it's bad news for Bush that 74% of Republicans do not think Bush is a true Reaganaut.

Allow me, however, to offer a contrarian view, damning Bush with faint praise. I think Bush is more of a Reaganaut (Reaganut?) than Reagan was. Reagan described the USA as a "city on a hill," shining the beacon of liberty and democracy on the rest of the world, but Bush has been more aggressive in meddling in other countries' business in the name of democracy. (Of course, the old hypocrisies still assert themselves: we condemn and harass Hugo Chavez, who for all his faults -- and there are many -- is apparently freely-elected and popular, and can barely manage a "tsk, tsk" at Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf.)

Reagan rattled his saber relentlessly against the Red Menace -- and invaded Grenada. Bush followed through on his promise to strangle terrorism in its crib -- then missed it by a couple countries when he invaded Iraq. Reagan's tax cuts for the rich, justified by what one observer called "voodoo economics," were dwarfed by Bush's, as has the consequent damage to the budget and the balance of payments been dwarfed by the trillion dollar debt we've amassed in six years.

Reagan ran in 1980 as an ideologue, but governed in a more moderate fashion. Bush, whose 2000 campaign was notable for its "compassionate conservatism" and rejection of nation-building and international adventurism, ran as a moderate but has been the most ideological president of modern times (perhaps ever).

When GOPers sign their hosannas to Saint Ronald, are they admiring his hard-right ideological campaigning or his center-right pragmatic governing?

Brother Martin McMurtrey, 1921-2007

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings

-- Shakespeare, Richard II

Brother Martin McMurtrey, S.M. died on Friday, November 9, in, as they say, "the 87th year of his life and the 69th year of his religious profession." I have always loved the solemn dignity of that formulation, and its elegance is very appropriate to "Brother Mac's" life.

The San Antonio Express-News did a nice article about him, but it barely scratched the surface of his impact on a whole generation of students. A fuller obituary is attached below, but it also fails to capture what a great spirit he was.

I love Martin McMurtrey. He was my English teacher my sophomore year at Central Catholic High School in San Antonio, where he taught for almost 50 years. In 1970, he pulled me and, I think, six other guys out of our usual English classes so that we could work with him on a special project -- writing an analysis of poverty in San Antonio and what we could do about it. It was one of the transforming experiences of my young life.

We met every day and did research, studying all kinds of reports and government documents. Gleaning the information from libraries, the city and the federal government was a huge learning experience. I remember how shocked I was to discover that San Antonio was the poorest major city in the United States (and, for all I know, still is). We wrote what I am sure is a very forgettable report -- but the experience of writing it still remains with and shapes me to this day.

But Brother Mac was not content to let that be the extent of our immersion in the learning process. He took all of us with him to St. Agnes Parish every week, where we taught religious education classes to impoverished schoolchildren. Like our report, I am sure the CCD lessons I taught were forgettable -- but McMurtrey's commitment to the poor and the eye-opening difference between my life and those kids' made a huge impression on me, then and now.

For fifty years, Martin McMurtrey was that kind of teacher and mentor, a transformational figure in the lives of thousands of future leaders.

Sometime in the early 1990s, I was talking to Jan Jarboe Russell, who followed a stint as a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News with a writing gig at Texas Monthly and a terrific book on Lady Bird Johnson. I was then working for Governor Ann Richards, but Jan and I had known each other since I was an organizer for COPS and MCA, two powerfully effective community organizations in San Antonio.

We were talking about growing up in San Antonio and she asked me about significant influences. I mentioned Brother Mac and how he'd broadened my worldview and sharpened my sense of social justice. She told me that, in previous conversations with both Henry Cisneros and Ernie Cortes (the founder of COPS and one of the most influential community organizers of the last half-century), they'd both mentioned Brother Mac as well.

It'd be a great story to talk with all the people whose lives he transformed.

The Difference Between the House and Senate, Part 387

Rummaging around on some other blogs brought me to the website of the Texas Heritage Alliance, a right-wing political organization masquerading as patriotic Christians. The Texas Heritage Alliance is the new nom de guerre of the Free Market Foundation and its affiliated FreePAC.

FreePAC had its fifteen minutes of infamy when, in 2002, is sent out a series of factually inaccurate, hateful mailers trying to sabotage the re-election chances of Republican elected officials like state Senators Bill Ratliff and Jeff Wentworth and state Representatives Brian McCall and (now Senator) Kip Averitt. Wentworth's mailer accused him of being "extremely liberal" because he'd voted for the hate-crimes legislation and was a supporter of gay rights. Wentworth, who voted against a hate crimes bill in 2001 and later authored the Defense of Marriage Act in 2003, was understandably outraged. After all, he may be a parking scofflaw, but he's no milquetoast liberal.

Wentworth, Ratliff and the others condemned FreePAC and its hateful tactics -- Ratliff called their mailers "political pornography" -- and the uproar forced FreePAC to go underground for a while. The discredited organization resurfaced as the Heritage Alliance, explained founder Richard Ford, "to signify a unified effort of economic and social conservatives passing those values onto future generations."

Anyway, the Heritage Alliance has a Legislators' Scorecard on its website, ranking all 150 House members and 31 Senators according to their votes on conservative issues like supporting Tom Craddick for Speaker (RV1) and placing "In God We Trust" above the dais in the House Chamber (RV16). In all, there are 67 House votes and 53 Senate votes analyzed to produce a ranking.

I think it's interesting that the Senators' scores are more clustered than the House members'. While House scores range from a low of 3 (Paul Moreno) to a high of 96 (Jodie Laubenberg), the Senate scores range only from a low of 40 (Eliot Shapleigh) to a high of 79 (Robert Nichols). In other words, the Senate is less extreme in the swing of its members' views than the House.

Interesting question: why are four of the five most conservative members of the House (Laubenberg, Brown, Crabb, Harper-Brown, and Riddle) women?

Cat Got Your Tongue?

If you're like me, you love lively, robust political discourse. And what's modern American political discourse without the occasional ad hominem attack? In fact, longtime political combatants come to enjoy a little name-calling in the service of their patriotism and worldview. Bob Novak, for example, liked being called "the Prince of Darkness" so much that he gave that title to his autobiography. He probably didn't like the title Jon Stewart bestowed on him -- Douchebag of Liberty -- as much.

In any case, sometimes words fail me when, in the heat of battle, I try to rip off a good insult. Thanks goodness there's the Conservative Insult Generator, guaranteed to help you put together a snarky little comment in no time flat. Try it, it's fun!

For the more conservative connoisseur, there's the Liberal Insult Generator too. Act now and get both in time for Thanksgiving! What a wonderful way to liven up those boring Thanksgiving dinner conversations.