Lyndon Baines Johnson

When the Senate was a real place, not one Senator would've left his seat for anything less than Secretary of State.

Mullin is an ideal nominee, because he's one of the only Republicans who hasn't shot a family pet, murdered a mistress, or run a child sex ring, at least as far as we know for now.

If the current trend holds, the next Senator from Oklahoma will be a blowup doll named Fredpatrick.

LBJ was often accused of being Martin Luther King's play thing, and Martin Luther King was often accused from within his movement of being to accommodating to LBJ. But that was the dance. Both men playing the other to their own ends and collaborating where it made sense. -OS

LBJ's relationship with the Black Freedom Struggle was never placid, but that's beside the point. It was politics. There was always posturing and threats, followed by compromise or even cooperation, because, again... that's politics. -OS

In 1941, Pappy O'Daniel beat me with a pocketful of fake votes I was stupid enough to let him turn in last. That's not what happened here -- what's germane, I wanted to challenge the result. Rayburn talked me down. Told me my political career would be over. Best advice I ever got.

I means neither Talarico nor Crockett got Walker County off its ass. -OS

This is a county we always watch with curiosity, because it's 25% black, 25% Hispanic, has a state university with 20,000ish students, and just never fuckin' votes. One would think if Democrats ever found the "real deal" (TM) Walker County would get off its ass to vote. -OS

Bob CatNamara

Top issue: maximum blood and chaos
Senate: Paxton
Gov: Abbott
Lt. Gov: Patrick
AG: Reitz
House: Steve Stockman
Judges: wrote in "I should be able to shoot people" on every line. -OS

Now we can reveal the office cats primary votes -- Lady Bird

Top issue: unregulated pooping/likes twinks
Senate: Hunt
Gov: Arturo Espinosa
Lt. Gov: Tim Mabry
AG: Middleton
House: Briscoe Cain
Judges: only candidates with clearly white and goy names. -OS

Crockett lost in Houston. 53% wasn't going to cut it. She needed 57. 58. That's the 50,000 votes she can't make up right there.

Black politics in Houston are organized. White politics in Houston are just a reflection of the business district interests and always have been. But Hispanic politics are just a mystery of where they'll go cycle to cycle. -OS

Mexican descent voters in Houston were pretty well organized in the 70s and 80s by players who'd come outta the Civil Rights era, but that's all been gone for quite some time now. -OS

Houston's politics are just so god damn chaotic because its Hispanic politics are just completely disorganized. Mexican-descent Houstonians always had different politics from Central American immigrants. But even just the Mexican descent group is organized by nothing. -OS

Central, South Texas, and El Paso. Talarico looks to have won with the classic LBJ primary coalition. Make of that what you will. -OS

A $72 barrel of oil is a good thing for the women who work the Galleria, if you catch my drift.

Another funny story, several years back we had a Masters student write a thesis about NASA's relationship with Texas and Aggie, and they described the working philosophy as "you shoot the Aggie into space, but you have the Longhorn do the math. And don't switch those roles." -OS

The Johnson Space Center also embodies that true Houston "fuck it, just try it" mentality because the land its on was bought from Rice with a handshake agreement to build it like a college campus, so that if the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo missions failed, Rice could repurpose it. -OS

Lol. -OS

Texas before the Baptist Ayatollahs -OS

It really brings home, these fuckin' yeehaws, and a bunch of a former Nazis who were pretty into the yeehaw, themselves, went to the god damn moon. -OS

The Johnson Space Center is perhaps the best encapsulation of Texas's contradictions. Particularly the rocket park... because the Saturn V, one of the greatest technological achievements in human history, is sitting in a shed in a field surrounded by longhorns and gators. -OS

One of the major motivating reasons to develop nuclear weapons is so that a power like the United States can't just randomly lob ordinance at you. So randomly lobbing ordinance is really horrible strategy for deterring the development of nuclear weapons. -OS

I have not voted yet, but that's because Bird and I are election day voters. Johnson City. First in line, always.

It's true that she isn't running a campaign based on knocking on doors. I would stop far short, however, of calling her campaign frivolous. I've held back from taking sides between Crockett and Talarico because I'll support either when it matters.

I'm of two minds about the primary turnout in Texas. It is encouraging to see so many Texans get off their duffs and vote. It also portends absolutely nothing about the coming general election.

You're an OG among OGs. -OS

Yet never the guy who really needed to go -- Cabot Lodge, in Saigon. -OS

A few of the people who contribute here have come and gone since then, but it's kinda of amazing we're still doing this. -OS