Texas! It’s Time to Start Flipping Tables!
There was a movie we watched, came out in 2024, Civil War (this is the IMDB link). Exciting, scary movie speculating about the next civil war in the United States of America, pitting a unified Texas and California against a co-alition of the conservatives. What I couldn’t figure out then was how could it be Texas and California? Texas was part of the conservative core?
And then, Tuesday night, the paradigm shifted. All things became possible. The most gracious acceptance speech given by James Talarico, created options that would have been unthinkable. I want to share that speech with you:
We just took back Texas. We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love. And we just sent a message to every billionaire mega donor, every trillionaire mega donor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system in this state, in this country: Power belongs to the people.
I’m reminded of that story from scripture of a shepherd boy who goes up against a giant. For 40 days, Goliath teases and taunts. On the day of the fight, he shows up in full armor. He’s carrying so many weapons. He needs someone else to carry his shield. In this race, we went up against our own Goliath.
The richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world and the entire Washington D.C. establishment. David wasn’t as big or as strong as Goliath. He didn’t have as many weapons, but he had hope. He had faith and he had a slingshot. You were my slingshot. The people of Texas were my slingshot. And tonight, and tonight we defeated Goliath.
Scripture has taught me, my own life has taught me, always bet on the underdog. Before I was a politician, I was a public school teacher. I taught language arts at Rhodes Middle School on the west side of San Antonio. And as I always say, teaching middle school is the best preparation for politics.
The West side is a beautiful historic neighborhood. It’s also one of the poorest zip codes in the entire state of Texas. Every day, my students struggled heroically to overcome a rigged system. My students weren’t just kids. They were survivors, dreamers, fighters. I saw it in their eyes every day, this unshakeable resolve, this unconquered spirit.
Growing up, I saw that same fight in my mother, a preacher’s daughter from Laredo who left home at 19.She moved up to Austin and met my birth father, a 21-year-old high school dropout whose drinking problem sometimes led to violence. One night he became abusive again, but that night, that night, my mother’s love rose to meet that abuse. She packed all our stuff into her little Ford Escort. She drove me to the hotel where she worked. She begged the manager to let us stay in one of the rooms until we found this little apartment in East Austin. There wasn’t room for a nursery, so I slept in a crib in her closet and she was so proud of that closet. She decorated it with pictures and toys. No one was going to tell her it wasn’t a nursery.
Always, always bet on the underdog. We were the underdogs in this race. We went up against nearly 40 years of doubt and disillusionment.We went up against more than $300 million, more than any Senate campaign in American history. We went up against all the negative ads, smear campaigns, foreign bots and AI deep fakes that money can buy. Those attacks were the final howls of a dying establishment. The death rattle of a status quo that knows its days are numbered.
They played dirty because they were desperate, but we never lost hope. We never lost faith. And against big money and long odds, we took our power back. Always, always bet on the underdog.
We built a movement unlike any this state has ever seen. We united Texans from all backgrounds and beliefs onto one team to take on this broken, corrupt political system. First time voters, three time Trump voters, working people from every corner of this state who are fed up and ready for change.
This win, this win is for every underdog who’s been counted out and left behind. This win is for every teacher and every nurse, for every farmer and every rancher, for every young person who’s trying to buy a home, for every parent who’s trying to put food on the table. This win, this win is for every Texan who’s ever wondered if anyone is listening. I heard you. We heard you. And tonight the world hears you.
To the Texans who supported this movement, I am humbled by your trust and I will work every day to be worthy of it. And to the Texans who didn’t vote for me, I will be your senator too. I will always serve you. I will always fight for you. This win is not about the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. It’s much bigger than that.
There is something broken in America. Our economic system is broken. Our political system is broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken. That’s because the most powerful people in the world want it that way.
My granddad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas, and when I was little, he told me that we follow a barefoot rabbi who gave us two commandments, love God and love neighbor, because there is no love of God without love of neighbor.
Every single person bears the image of the sacred. Every single person is holy, not just my neighbor who looks like me, not just my neighbor who prays like me, not just my neighbor who votes like me. I am called to love all of my neighbors the way I love myself.
Because despite our differences, we all want the same things; a safe neighborhood, a good job, a high quality, well-funded public school, and the ability to see a doctor when we need one.
But the billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens, they want us at each other’s throats. They want us focused on how we’re different instead of on how we’re the same. They want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them.
The real fight in this country is not left versus right. It is top versus bottom. The people at the top work so hard to keep us angry and divided, because our unity is a threat to their wealth and their power. We saw it in this race. We saw it in every billionaire funded attack ad.
The people at the top divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they are picking our pockets. That they are defunding our schools, that they are gutting our healthcare, that they are raising taxes on all of us while they cut taxes for themselves. It is the oldest strategy in the world, divide and conquer.
But tonight we sent a crystal clear message to the people at the top. We will not be conquered. I think it’s safe to say that we are tired of being pitted against each other. We are tired of being told to hate each other. It has been 10 years of this kind of politics, politics as blood sport, politics as trolling and owning, politics as professional wrestling.
It tears families apart. It ends friendships and it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time. People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division, but a politics of love.
My faith teaches me that love is the strongest force in the universe. Love is not passive. Love is not neutral. Love is not weak. Love requires that we stand between the bullies and the bullied. Love requires that we look evil in the eye and not blink. That kind of love has always been a threat to the powers that be. That kind of love is revolutionary. That kind of love is creative.
Hate is predictable. Hate is boring. Hate can’t lower our energy bills. Hate can’t teach a child to read. Hate can’t build a future. But what hate can’t do, love can.Love can turn a student into a scholar. Love can turn a closet into a nursery. Love can turn an enemy into a friend. Love can turn a campaign into a movement. Love, love can heal what’s broken in America. We can’t defeat the politics of division with more division. We can’t win that game. We have to change the game.
In my experience, when you extend an open hand rather than a closed fist, you’ll be surprised by who takes that hand. We didn’t win this race by alienating our neighbors, or shaming our neighbors, or ridiculing our neighbors. We embodied a new kind of politics, a politics rooted in a deep love for our state, for our country, and most importantly, for all of our neighbors.
We mobilized. We mobilized our 60,000 volunteers in every corner of the state, and together we delivered bottled water to Sand Branch, a community south of Dallas with no running water. We donated school supplies to an elementary school in El Cenizo, a small town on the border. We collected more than 20,000 pounds of groceries for families in Fort Worth who are struggling under the high cost of living.
Before the world changes in ways you see on TV or read about in newspapers, the world changes person to person, neighbor to neighbor. In each moment when you choose to be kind, in each neighbor we choose to love, in each prayer that we save for someone who would not pray for us in return. This is how we won Texas. This is a win the size of Texas. And now we have a mandate the size of Texas.
This election was about chasing a vision of what this state can be. Texas public schools that are the envy of the nation, a Texas economy that is second to none, and Texas families that are stronger and healthier than they’ve ever been before. It won’t happen overnight, but a giant state deserves giant dreams. And we know how to get there. We must get big money out of our politics, so no billionaire or trillionaire can buy our elections.We must unrig this economic system that only benefits the top 1%. We must pass universal healthcare, so no one goes bankrupt just because they get sick. We must invest in our teachers and our students, so every underdog has a fighting chance. We must end these corrupt forever wars that are driving up prices and killing our great men and women in uniform.
And we must heal the deep spiritual corruption at the root of all of these crises. We must bridge the divides between us and repair the ties that bind us. We forged a new kind of politics here in the Lone Star State, an answer to this decade of division.
We showed that when working people come together across every dividing line, we can do extraordinary things. We won this race because people who are desperate for change now are going to get change.
That old politics is dying and a new politics is being born through each of us, through every underdog, through every David against every Goliath, through every Texan who believed in our state and believed in this movement. Now the real work begins.
2,000 years ago when the people at the top hurt his neighbors, that barefoot rabbi didn’t stay in his room and pray. He walked into the seat of power and he flipped over the tables of injustice. As this movement heads to the seat of power, as we head to the United States Senate, we know what this moment requires of us.
Texas, it’s time to start flipping tables.
Celebrating D E I
I will tell you that not all of my candidates won last night, but the races tightened in blood red Florida, and Florida elected the first black governor in the USA. And then, another! And then, a Native American!
In my wildest dreams, I never expected the abundance, the sheer waterfall of good people elected to office, shifting the entire tone of our Congress and our Senate. In the face of vile attacks, they returned good humor.
I got a good night’s sleep even before the last returns were being tallied. Some amazing races, some amazing victories, some amazingly tight races where no one expected them. The dazzling backlash against the greedy attempts at redistricting to insure a win.
LOL at the big bully!
Opening a Can of Worms
One thing I loved the most when I started this blog, Lo those twenty years ago, was that most of my readers were foreign, but understood and spoke English. Once you have the basics, the idioms and metaphores are a lot of fun.
We do not literally kick a dead horse, or hit the rack, or open a can of worms, but we understand what those phrases imply. We will not literally open a can of worms if the Department of Justice opens an investigation into Corey Lewandowski. We will be looking at a situation which has gone unaddressed, the use of political office for self-enrichment.
In every society I’ve lived in, there are things we don’t talk about, because once you open that can of worms, or let that cat out of the bag, you can no longer contain the problem, and you have to deal with the consequences. Many times, the consequences are unanticipated.
When asked about the Lewandowski investigation, here is what the President said:
“If they’re not going to be honest, they have to be prosecuted,” Trump warned, adding that dishonesty amounts to “stealing from me as president.”
Actually, Mr. President, his dishonesty means he is stealing from the USA as a nation. It’s kind of like ignoring the laws against buying stock when you know you are going to announce a policy that will enhance its value. It’s kind of like accepting gifts from foreign countries – it’s compromising our integrity. It’s kind of like relying on business moguls with their own agendas to regulate Starlink access in the Ukraine, having to go hat in hand to them when you need a favor. It’s kind of like disregarding Congress when you commit acts of war against another sovereign nation. It’s kind of like they could expect a favor in return, It’s kind of like robbing the USA when the Supreme Court gives you immunity and using your very best judgement, you abuse it.
When the Homeland Security Inspector General refers a case to the DOJ, he probably has a strong case. When the evidence is produced, there may well be parallels in other dealings open to the public view.
In this case, maybe letting those worms out will provide some much needed transparency as to the state of collusion and co-option within our executive branch, his appointees, and the hamstringing of the Department of Justice so that it serves the President, and not the United States of America.
And on the subject of metaphors:
Energy Lag
First, the good news – our son and his family, and more residents, are gaining electrical power. When I heard my daughter-in-law’s voice, saying, “We have electricity!” she bordered on giddy, the same emotion Adventureman and I shared when we heard the first click, our air conditioner coming on.
This morning, I emptied the dishwasher, folded my granddaughter’s laundry, fed all the cats and did some picking up. I planned to go to Chapel at my granddaughter’s school and then swim, but this morning I am tired and a little achy. I’ve been so pleased with my fitness level, and now I wonder if some of that wasn’t boosted by adrenaline. The picking up of debris seemed endless.
AdventureMan and I are luckily on track – we are both very concerned about our huge horizontal tree. We haven’t heard back from our preferred tree service. Our neighbor’s yards are full of our tree, and while we know, legally, it is their problem, this very large task really needs to be attacked by experts. One woman on Nextdoor was approached by one of the tree services and provided a quote of $26,000 for the removal of her tree. $26,000.
Lifelong Pensacolians tell us to wait; these are post-hurricane predators who move in to take advantage of the situation will fade away and prices will start coming down.
On the other hand, we fear a strong wind could bring this tree rolling towards our house, or the trees propping it up could fail, and the tree could roll towards our house. It seems risky to leave it in place, and yet we don’t want this tricky removal to be handled by amateurs.
This is what it feels like when the excitement of the storm ends, and our bodies and minds have to deal with the realities. In contrast, dealing with all the debris is doable and mind-numbing.
The crown of the tree, most of the leafy branches are down in our neighbor’s yard.
Legally, it is his responsibility. As good neighbors, however, we will work together. Right now the heavy branches anchor the tree in place; if those are taken off first, the trunk is free to roll. The trunk is tightly wedged, putting pressure on the other oaks; that area is clearly our responsibility. The heaviest part of the trunk is about twenty feet over our other neighbor’s yard. We need to fix this.
My house helper just asked me if we had noticed any problem with the water. We haven’t. The boil water notice ended last night and we stopped worrying about water. But when I checked, we barely have any water pressure at all, an unexpected happenstance.
So many post-storm occurrences. We know it will all be better, but meanwhile schools remain closed while they are inspected for safety. The school bus drivers can’t even get into some neighborhoods that are still blocked by trees down. AdventureMan left his famous fresh-baked biscuits for our mail carrier; she told us she still can’t deliver to the area behind our house because of street blockages and lines still down.
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up!
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former Press Secretary, has outraged white males by making them the face of her Arkansas welfare-to-work program. The HUFF Post skewered commentators who want black women featured, as “everyone knows” they are the real welfare fraudsters, right? Statistically, no. Do your homework before you share your outrage. Thank you, HuffPost.
Far-Right Commentators Rage Over GOP Welfare Fraud Ad Featuring White Male Gamer
A new ad by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders put white men at the center of her state welfare work requirement policy.
and
Sep 28, 2026, 03:00 PM
Media commentators in the MAGA movement shredded Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday over a new TV ad depicting white male gamers as the target of a state welfare fraud crackdown — and claimed the Republican hadn’t injected enough race into her messaging
Drawing the ire of the right: Sanders’ promotion of new work requirements for Natural State welfare recipients, featuring a tousle-headed gamer named “Brad,” shown in the advert mashing a video game controller and scarfing potato chips.
“Brad has turned relaxing into a full-time profession,” Sanders tells voters in the ad. “But you, you actually work hard. You pay taxes to cover welfare for guys like Brad who just choose not to work.”
You pay taxes to cover welfare for people who just choose not to work. That’s why I launched a welfare-to-work requirement.
If you’re young, healthy, and get government assistance, you should work, go to school, or volunteer. — Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) September 28, 2026
Republicans and conservatives eyeing greater restrictions on welfare recipients have repeatedly invoked the image of a gamer, typically young and male, when speaking about Americans they say abuse government benefits. But Sanders’ cheese ball-munching “Brad” proved especially offensive to far-right commentators.
The dustup targeting Sanders, a longtime Trump loyalist and former White House press secretary during his first term, illustrates how achieving long-standing conservative policy goals — like work requirements for government aid recipients — is often not enough for identity-obsessed MAGA allies, who want to display dominance over their perceived political enemies far more than they want to fix the nuts and bolts of governance.
Conservative podcast host Matt Walsh claimed the number of single white men on welfare was “minuscule” and “practically non-existent.”
“Meanwhile, back in reality, women are significantly more likely to be on welfare than men,” Walsh fumed in a reply to Sanders posted to X. “And black people are astronomically more likely to be on welfare than white people.”
And Walsh made clear he thought Sanders and other Republicans should lean into the issue’s racial dimension. “Republicans don’t have the balls to do this ad with ‘Shaniqua’ as the villain,” he wrote. “Even though that would actually be an accurate portrayal of the problem at hand.”
Walsh’s assumptions about Medicaid recipients might be a bit off. Nationally, 36% of Medicaid recipients were white, 24% were Hispanic and 19% were Black in 2023, according to the most recent analysis from KFF. The overwhelming majority of gamers are white.
Right-wing pastor Joel Webbon offered an even blunter take. “Why pick a white man?” he said. “You should make your message more believable by picking someone Black.”
Jack Posobiec, a Turning Point USA contributor and longtime far-right activist, took to Sanders’ X replies to ask AI assistant Grok about the demographics of welfare recipients in Arkansas. “Yikes,” he wrote in a follow-up post. “Who produced this ad? Good policy — but why is it always a white male?”
Other far-right commentators claimed “Brad” was an emblem of Republican disdain for white men.
“A lot of the GOP is so scared of being called mean names by the media that they can only ever turn their guns on the one group that overwhelmingly supports them,” said Blaze TV’s Logan Hall. “It’s just pure cowardice and stupidity all the way down.”
Walsh concurred, arguing that while white men formed the largest GOP voting bloc, the party “shits on” them “at every opportunity.”
“These idiotic cowards don’t even have the guts to criticize groups that will never vote for them anyway,” he said. “They just never learn.”
A spokesperson for Sanders’ office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Arkansas started imposing new limits on Medicaid benefits for unemployed adults without disabilities in July. Republicans in Congress last year told states to tighten so-called “work requirements” to help offset the cost of a massive tax cut tilted toward wealthier households and corporations.
“I’m thankful to President Trump and congressional Republicans for paving the way for this commonsense solution and allowing us to put our welfare work requirement in place,” Sanders said in July.
Though cutting social spending is generally unpopular, billing the cuts as work requirements makes them much more palatable to voters. And Republicans have sought to villainize people affected by the new rules by portraying them as lazy gamers.
“The next time a Democrat makes false claims about ‘Medicaid cuts,’ just remember that what they’re really saying is they want illegal aliens and able-bodied adults playing video games at home to continue stealing resources from those who need it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement from his office last year.
There’s a grain of truth to the talking point. In an analysis of American Time Use Survey data, the conservative American Enterprise Institute found last year that childless, unemployed adults enrolled in Medicaid spent 4.2 hours per week watching TV or playing video games, while Medicaid recipients with jobs spent only 2.7 hours per week watching TV or gaming.
Intlxpatr: This article caught my attention and made me laugh. Sometimes, it’s hard to overcome our beliefs, even when faced with facts. HuffPost often catches the contradictions in our political convictions.
Two Red Queens Fighting First Amendment
Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth have both limited press coverage, Trump in the White House and Hegseth in the Pentagon. The Press is only allowed to present the news as seen by these two Red Queens who shout “Off With Their Heads!” the minute their feelings are hurt. The want “Truth” to be what they say it is. Our Press knows better.
This is a dangerous challenge to the rights of the American people to know what is going in in their government. Things like knowing what is going on with a war they never approved. How their tax monies are being spent. How their elections will be conducted.
I love that political cartoonists are weighing in, and that their depictions are brutal. The Red Queens are brutalizing our First Amendment rights, trying to determine that “TRUTH is what we say it is.” Do you believe them?
I am praying our courts will serve the Red Queens with a brutal comeuppance.
(For my foreign readers, Red Queens refers to an arbitrary, lunatic monarch in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.)
Where to Start?
A President who won’t take accountability for his own policy follies? A President who fiddles (gilds the White House, demolishes a monument to former President Kennedy, starts a war without Congressional approval, gives contracts to his cronies without going through established processes, fires, and then re-hires critical bureaucrats, lies to the American public about election security, dabbles in trivialities) while Rome burns (gas hits record prices, allies are increasingly imperiled, national parks are starved for funds and broken apart, the education system tumbles and incivility reigns)?
A President who lies to the American people about just about everything AND who is trashing the American economy?
“The Cruelty is the Point”
I was singing to the choir, complaining to my old high school friend about the tactics and strategies employed by the Trump administration, against immigrants, against the press, and against any citizen disagreeing with this administration’s viewpoint. “It all seems so intentional, so cruel,” I said.
“The cruelty is the point,” he responded. It was short, pithy, but that was weeks ago and I continue to ponder the phrase. I wondered why it sounds familiar – my friend used quote marks – so this morning, I googled it and got this very thorough AI response:
“The cruelty is the point” is a political phrase coined by The Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer in a prominent 2018 essay. [1, 2]
Origin and Meaning
- Coinage: Adam Serwer used the phrase in his October 2018 essay, “The Cruelty Is the Point”. [1, 2, 3]
- Core Argument: Serwer argued that the policies and public behavior of the Trump administration and its supporters were not accidentally harsh or crude, but intentionally designed to cause pain to marginalized groups. [1, 2]
- The Bond: He wrote that inflicting this pain creates a powerful sense of unity, pride, and shared identity among political supporters, binding them together through common opposition to outsiders, immigrants, and minority groups. [1]
Book Adaptation
- Publication: Serwer expanded his essays into a book titled The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, published in June 2021. [1, 2]
- Themes: The book examines how modern political conflicts connect to deeper historical currents in the United States, including white supremacy, migration debates, police unions, and the legacy of the Lost Cause. [1, 2]
Usage and Legacy
- Political Lexicon: The phrase became a widely adopted descriptor in political commentary to characterize populist movements, harsh immigration rules (such as family separations), and rhetoric directed at political opponents. [1, 2, 3]
- Broader Application: Analysts and commentators frequently invoke the phrase outside the Trump administration to describe political strategies that rely on outraging rivals and signaling hostility toward specific demographic or social groups. [1, 2]
The original article in The Atlantic states:
“It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.”
I urge you to read the October 2018 essay, and the book. From the beginning of the second Trump term, from the the very first day with the horrifying Presidential Edicts, the cruelty has been increasingly woven into public policy. The policies are Anti-American, anti-immigrant, anti-women and anti-everything I was taught to believe as I grew up – That we are created and born with equal rights, male and female, black, white, yellow, red and all the glorious colors in between. “Red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in His sight.”
Our priest told us from the pulpit this week that we are “to carry the light.” Each one of us, individually and together, carries the light. We can choose to be kind. We can reflect “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
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Early Voting in Florida
