El Gato, your link to Ciro’s site doesn’t work. I think it’s http://cirodrodriguez.com/

The Pelosi 100-hour plan (pat. pending) has got to be helping Ciro. What are the issues in TX-23? Is the war a big deal?

Part of Ciro’s district is in San Antonio, aka Military City USA, and his district wraps around to…Lackland AFB. You’d better believe the war is a huge issue in this district.

The Virgen de Guadalupe probably won’t have much of an impact. There’s doing the respect the Virgin thing, but it’s not Christmas or Thanksgiving. It’s not Fiesta, even, which has thousands across San Antonio not going to work, and the schools getting closed. The ones who care about it might pop into their parish before or after work, but that’s about it. I’m more worried about the Hispanics who’ll be using it as an excuse to have a family gathering, and are too preoccupied with that to remember to vote. We do love our parties here in SA. But there won’t be many families going too gung ho with that route. Not on a Tuesday. My take: Minimal impact, if any.

My concern is the willfully dishonest campaign Bonilla is running. I saw one of his ads in the mail, huge mailing, going to hundreds of thousands of voters. Full color. He talks about Ciro voting to take people’s homes. It won’t work in every zip code he blankets, but it will work in the areas outside of San Antonio, at least with the scared Anglos, who make up a large percentage of non-SA voters. They won’t ask why Ciro voted against certain bills, they’ll just panic that he wants to take their land. This is the same tactic used against Max Cleland to deride him for voting against Homeland Security, without explaining why he did (he wanted bargaining unit rights for fed employees, that was stripped from the bill).

Bonilla is also presenting himself as a champion of small government. I doubled over laughing the first time I saw that. Yeah, he wants small goverment for we the people, but all the government anyone could want for big corporations. Fucking jerk. A well-placed ad saying this might get him to back off that tactic. Or, better yet, show ads of NOLA, and ask what Bonilla did to help them. People in this district can relate to floods. We’ve had quite a few devastating ones.

How much impact will Bonilla’s ad campaign have? I can’t speak for the outlying areas. In my neck of TX-23, it’s heavily Anglo, heavily Republican, very well-to-do, very scared of the brown people, and very religious (or pretending to be). They’ll go for Bonilla, no matter what. Uptight fuckwads. Venturing into other parts of SA, Bonilla is in trouble. Most of the San Antonio parts of the district are Hispanic, poor/working class, and worried about jobs and the like. Bonilla isn’t spending his money wisely here, either. He can send all the fliers he wants, but he’s not sending them in Spanish to neighborhoods that would respond to that. STUPID STUPID STUPID.

Outside of San Antonio is a mixed bag. You have the scared Anglo ranchers and country folk, who have way too many religious loonies in the mix. They’re easily swayed with emotional ads about saving the babies and nuking the gays. Even more importantly, they’re terrified of hordes of brown people crossing the border. The Republicans are preying on that fear. Some ugly “issue group” ads have floated, and they’re effective with this group. But it’s a double-edged sword for Bonilla, because the whole district in the outlying areas also has huge swaths of very poor Hispanics who vote Dem and they really, REALLY resent having been made the “face” of the immigration problem. They don’t buy his small government BS, either.

Now, back to the topic at hand….Jane, Chris Duel is on the station I was talking about and he is kind of righty (even with the Kinky support)…but the other guy is an older man who comes on in the middle of the day, Brad Messer….he has really come to hate bushco and is actually quite vocal about it….which is refreshing since this can be such a right wing town. How cool that you went to grad school with him and do like him….some of the things he talks about are pretty interesting….like going to Burning Man and things like that.

Anyway, the 12th being the Virgin of Guadalupe day….(Me in Houston @ 20)….She’s a pretty big deal in SA…a LOT of people are very reverential about her, so it really could have an impact with Hispanic voters….and is why that day was picked by the republican asshole secretary of state, Abbott.

He doesn’t need money? Looks to me like Henry Bonilla has him outfunded by about ten to one. Where is Rahm Emmanuel? Only one race the national Dems need to focus on and the Republicans are funding Bonilla. Where the hell are the Dems? Where is Rahm Emmanuel? Where are James Carville’s rants now? Where the hell is Howard Dean? It’s the same old thing, national Dems concede Texas even though several counties voted Democratic here on the seventh for the first time in decades.

Bonilla, R-San Antonio, reported $955,000 in cash-on-hand for the Dec. 12 election, compared to $91,000 for Rodriguez, according to reports covering the one-month period that ended Nov. 22.

Well, the DCCC isn’t sitting on its hands for this race. They have (very good) field staff in Texas working the district. They have also spent about $230,000 in the past few days on direct mail, phone banking, and media buys, with likely more to come. If you want to see what they’ve done recently, check the following links:
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…../260912/se
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…../260823/se
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…../260321/se

“What words can you no longer tolerate? What words do you no longer say?” In this way I gathered entries for “A Lexicon of Terror,” a record of the changes wrought in the Argentine language by the perpetrators of the Dirty War. Perversions of the language contribute to the sinister, indeed surreal, quality of life in Buenos Aires. In concentration camp slang, the metal table on which prisoners were laid out to be tortured was called la parrilla. Traditionally, la parrilla has referred to the classic horizontal grill—the centerpiece of the beloved social barbecue—and to the ubiquitous restaurants that serve grilled meat. Stand on any street corner in Buenos Aires and it comes at you from all directions: Parrilla, parrilla, parrilla—sustenance, pleasure, and annihilation, all present in a single quotidian word. No wonder the present [Menem] government, which pardoned the ex-commanders—has so often advised the public to “turn the page.” (pp.48–49)

Actually what I said up top isn’t quite true. The Bush Administration has been reminding me of this for several years, and the book has been at the top of my re-reads for some weeks. Kirk’s news pointer just gave me a reason to excerpt from it here.

TeddySanFran @
42

Time for Amendment XXV.

Section 4.

That’s the problem – Cheney becomes President. (overtlly) Now, there’s a terrifying prospect. What to do? One’s insane, and the other is evil incarnate.

See sections 2 and 3 and add in a Cheney health resignation; the sequence matters. The prediction is that people will start talking about these options, and impeachment. I don’t think the Republicans will want that conversation to drag on into 2008.

robert greenwald @ 44

GREAT work again matt! keep at it, this is critically important stuff