text:
The battle to replace Wendy Davis in the Texas Senate continues.As election officials counted ballots in the hotly contested race for the Texas Senate District 10 seat late Tuesday, two candidates rose to the top of the five-way Republican race and are on their way to a May 27 runoff: Konni Burton of Colleyville and former state Rep. Mark Shelton of Fort Worth.At the same time, two local state representatives — Diane Patrick, R-Arlington, and Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth — were defeated in their re-election bids.And while the Republicans in Senate District 10 are headed to a runoff, Libby Willis clinched the Democratic Party's nomination for the same post.Here's a look at where the local legislative races stood Wednesday, according to unofficial election results from the Tarrant County Elections Center.Senate 10As Davis continues to pursue her bid to become Texas' next governor, the battle ramps up to fill the local Senate seat she leaves behind.The high-dollar race for this post has drawn statewide attention because if Democrats lose this race and all other Senate seats stay the same, Republicans would inch closer to claiming a supermajority in the upper chamber.On Tuesday evening, Burton, a longtime leader in the NE Tarrant Tea Party, took an early lead and held on to it, ultimately claiming 43 percent, less than the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff.Shelton, a pediatrician and former state representative who lost a bid for this seat in 2012 to Davis, followed in second place, holding 35 percent, with all 357 precincts reporting tallies."I'm excited about this," Burton said Tuesday night. "This is exactly what we expected. I know the grassroots came out and we've got support all over the district. We are going to take this on to the May election and win."Shelton's campaign staff late Tuesday said it was too early to comment on the results.Tony Pompa, an Arlington school trustee, claimed 12 percent; Mark Skinner, a Colleyville businessman, earned 6 percent; and Jon Schweitzer, a Colleyville chiropractor, had 3 percent.On the Democratic side of the primary, Willis, a longtime neighborhood leader in Fort Worth, claimed 56 percent of the vote to 43 percent for Mike Martinez, a Fort Worth energy executive, with all the primary votes counted."I will need more help going forward to November," Willis said. "This is the most important Senate race in Texas. It not only is a campaign to keep Senate District 10 on the side of working families, but whether the entire Texas Senate is going to turn on working families. "This race has become one of the most highly watched races statewide because it is the only Texas Senate race that could go to either party in November, political observers say."Of the 16 Senate seats in play this election cycle, SD-10 is the only one where there exists any doubt as to which party will be victorious in November," Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, has told the Star-Telegram. "It is the state's only competitive Senate district."House District 90After trailing for several hours, Burnam pulled ahead in his re-election bid late Tuesday, but then dropped below the 50 percent mark again as the final votes were tallied.This race, a close battle for a district that includes Como, and some north- and south-side neighborhoods, grew controversial and heated in the days before the election as accusations ramped up about negative attacks.Challenger Ramon Romero Jr. held on to 51.09 percent, winning by 111 votes, according to incomplete, unofficial reports.House District 92State Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, took a strong and early lead in his re-election bid.The 30-year-old Tea Party conservative earned nearly 65 percent of the vote to the 35 percent claimed by challenger Andy Cargile, a GOP establishment-supported educator from Hurst, with nearly one-third of Tarrant County's votes reported.This race quickly drew the attention of political observers statewide, becoming one of the races to watch, as accusations flew about everything from education to party affiliation to improper Facebook posts. It became the classic battle of two factions within the Republican Party — the establishment versus Tea Party conservatives."I seek reelection to the Texas House because we know this position is more important than just one vote," Stickland posted on Facebook. "This time in our history demands a representative who will defend life and liberty and fight against the liberal agenda."House District 94State Sen. Diane Patrick, R-Arlington, trailed in election results all of Tuesday night — and final results showed she lost her re-election bid, claiming only 44 percent of the vote.The tally for her challenger, Tony Tinderholt, a former military man making his first bid for public office, steadily climbed Tuesday night and ultimatley reached 55 percent of the vote.Tinderholt said he was running for this office because he was worried about "the future of the nation and the future of Texas." Patrick, a former schoolteacher and professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, said she was seeking a fifth term in office because she wanted to help address key issues such as water, transportation and education.
Anna Tinsley, 817-390-7610 Twitter: @annatinsley


text:
Salman Rushdie hissy-fit forces Facebook name U-turn
Facebook has upset Salman Rushdie after the company initially refused to let the controversial author use his common name rather than his first name when signing up to the network. The writer, who is a newcomer to the Web2.0 game, explained on Twitter that his full name is Ahmed Salman Rushdie. "Amazing. 2 days ago FB …
Still don't fancy
trying to finish Midnight's Children, but full marks to the man.
I'm glad he's ok, but it's tough shit if you're not famous.
yup, doubt many of us have the fame to excert this kind of pressure..
but surely all the problems with him initially being declared not-salman-rushdie comes from him being famous in the first place? and his only objection to using his 'real' name after establishing that he was indeed himself, is that he is better known as 'salman rushdie' (as per my post, the name of the article, and the name on the cover of his books?)
Salman is his "real" name. He just happens to have more than one christian/forename. I also use the middle name. Handy, people trying to be matey by using my first name clearly are salesmen or agents and at any rate people not knowing me well enough to use my christian name at all.
We do not all fall into some tidy USA-centric box, thank heavens.
Yes, I reckon that as usual it's the poor what gets the blame or whatever.
I know loads of people whose name everyone knows is nothing to do with what it says on their passport.
In the UK at least your name is what you are known as, nothing more nothing less.
@oddie - yup, doubt.....
You are obviosly so completely bound by some North American Anglo-Saxon concept of how names work that you are not aware that some parts of the rest of the world have different conventions.
IN Scotland, we used to suffer badly from this: during teh 19th and most of teh 20th centuries the dominant English speakers provideed all the registrars of births, and they refused to record Gaelic names. So the parent's of someone whose name was Seumas Dhomhuill Mac a' Phi would be asked what the hell that meant, and when they replied "it's the Gaelic form of Donald's James Mac a Fee" the name would be registered as "Donald James MacAfee". So the patronymic is first, the personal name is second, and the family name is third (and all three names are completely screwed up, but that's not the point - the point is the re-ordering caused by different for order of nouns in genetive grammatical relationships).
Think of it this way: to many cultures the natural order of the names, when translated to English, is <father's name><my name><family name>; the second term in that string is the only real name, all the rest is just explaining which one of the people who use that real name you are.
I understand this because I suffer from it personally; and I suffer from the lunatic idea of translating names in the first place too: notice how the personal name in the above (which, incidentally, has no connection with me) changed from Seumas (which would be "Sheumais", which you probably know as "Hamish", in the vocative case) to James. If all your friends and family and neighbours call you "Hamish" how do you react when some total stranger starts calling you "Donald" instead, and would "James" be much better? One of my pet complaints about speakers (especially USAian ones) of English is how they don't understand that other cultures have other conventins and certainly don't understand that names are declined by grammatical case in many languages.
Well, Rushdie _is_ right...
Farcebook _is_ run by morons. This kind of pissfight over "real" names is proof.
At any rate... good for you, Mr. Rushdie. Shame you have to be famous to get any action out of Farcebook, and a shame he was forced to show them his passport.
I recently was forced to give up my mobile phone number to have one of my Gmail accounts reactivated after Google suspended it, citing "suspicious activity" (as they have yet to define what the "activity" was, I'll have to assume they're doing it to drag in all the "refuseniks" who aren't giving in to the "let us have your mobile number in case your account is compromised" nag). Technically, it wasn't a phish as I got the message from Google as I was logging in (rather than a scam email), though due to their inability to tell me what the actual "suspicous activity" was, I'll have to assume that Google is phishing for mobile numbers.
Normally, I would've withheld my mobile number and abandoned the account, but it was the account I had to establish to set up a blog on Blogspot. Bastards. Call it a "hissy fit" if you want, but I'm totally behind Rushdie on this one.
At least we now know that when we see a scan of Mr. Rushdie's passport online, we know with a relatively high degree of certainty where it must have come from.
"Farcebook _is_ run by morons...."
Billionaire morons.
..... still morons. Riches are no indication of common sense merely that someone has something that someone else wants to buy. If folk should no longer want to buy then those riches can potentially start to disappear when the venture capitalists call in the debt.
Anything that annoys Rushdie is good with me
As he is a self-important, pretentious dick; like Umberto Ecoo but with less of a sense of humour. To call his output turgid would be unfair to turgidity...
I feel better now. As you were.
Just a thought.
Maybe try a literacy program first, then possibly some Enid Blyton, before chewing off large pieces...
Blimey - I never realized he was able to force you to buy his books and make you read them?
What a git. He never does that with me, or anyone else I know.
re: "@AC"
According to a friend who worked for the publisher, they actually had an in-office prize of a crate of wine for the first person to actually finish The Satanic Verses. No-one claimed it.
Also, to the angry daily mail reader foaming about Enid Blyton above, I was paid to review it, in fact. The review was not favourable. Unlike you, I am quite comfortable with books that lack pictures.
Go on, downvote me again, and then go back to fapping over the Clarkson voice on your satnav, thereby confirming every redtop stereotype.
lemmie guess...
running your finger along the page under all those words gave you a booboo?
Just in case he didn't, I did.
Happy now?
"angry daily mail reader"
Whahahahahahaha hahahah. Hahahah. Hm... snif. Mwahahaha ahhahahhhahhahah.
A reader would not have linked "(possibly) pro-Rushdie and (definitely) anti-Blyton" to the DM. And "angry"? Hm. Possibly I'd expect a reader's vocabulary on emotions to extend beyond those in the books I give to my one year old --- happy/sad/angry, but maybe you didn't review it in the English version.
Try again.
The moral of the story...
Sometimes Jihad works.
This from a man who managed to insult his own religion enough to get death threats from other members of it.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Insult socialism in front of my in-laws and you get the same thing. And they are exACTly the kind of people who approach socialism as a religion.
It shouldn't matter whose religion it is....
...it should be possible to insult it without actually getting death threats.
You can't insult the church of England
No matter what you say, one of the idiots will turn round and say "You might have a point there".
It makes them impervious to satire and ridicule.
"Insult socialism in front of my in-laws and you get the same thing."
Issue an edict calling for your execution? That's pretty harsh. Maybe you should have your wife talk to them.
writer's block?
"Rushdie kept up the pressure on the dominant social network by continuously tweeting to his 115,000 followers in the hope of getting a response from Zuckerberg's crew."
Doesn't he have better things to do?
I know, does he think he can write for a living or something?
I wonder how many of the 115,000 managed to finish reading his tweets.
re: "writer's block?"
Don't knock it. Every hour that he wastes on facebook is one less squeezing out a new novel.
Highly unlikely, self serving a-holes are just like that.
I hear Jon Venables had a similar problem.
That is all.
I do wonder...
I do wonder why so many people wanted to kill Ahmed Rushdie, he's such a 'people person'.
Like all authors - his name *is* his public profile, or brand.
For him to make a fuss to assert/use is name/brand makes perfect sense to me?
Maybe they confused
him with A(c)hmed the Dead Terrorist?
We had a kid at school who was muslim make a big fuss about the Satanic Verses so I went out and borrowed it from the library. Don't think I even got past the first page, only book I think I've ever read that was written worse than the first Harry Potter book.
Saw Mr Rushdie once
True story - I was at a members bar full of er.... younger individuals. Salman comes in with his very tall girlfriend. When he left (which was a pretty quick drink) a young man comes up and says "You are Salmon Rushdie right?" "Yes" he replies.... the man responds "I'm such a fan - I've got all your records!".
... Quick exit....
I _have_ got all Salman Rushdie's records!
A little known fact about Mr Rushdie is that back when he was an advertising drone he wrote and was credited with the lyrics of a promotional record for the Burnley Building Society. You can find it on YouTube, but be quick before he pulls another hissy fit and issues a takedown request...
Also "The ground beneath her feet"
I think it was called that. Lyrics by Rushdie, music by U2.
Thank you Salman Rushdie, master of the obvious.
Now all he has to do
Is deactivate his account and state that Facebook is crap and it all wasn't worth the trouble.
His Only Mistake
Was not walking away in the end.
... Mr Rushdie doesn't want to be Ahmed and Dangerous.
Conclusion: FB is run by ignorant morons
But,sadly, I'm not surprised - I noticed this trend here, in the US: for some reason it's now a badge of honor to be absolutely stupid, clueless, ignorant and it's not limited to the flag-wavers of right-wing populist idiocy anymore but it's widespread among the rest of the so-called 'educated class'...
Sad, but true.
The contagion has spread. It's been surreptitiously spreading throughout the UK for a few decades, predominantly in the far right and the socialist left and is now infecting many in the central ground. The Moron Contagion has also been prevalent among those directing education policy in the UK for many a year.
Moron-ism is the new 'kool'
The Cat Crap on the Vegetables...
... probably explains it.
the same guy who had millions of tax payers money spent on his security by the British.gov and then he said he hated Britain? (or something like that)
He most probably needed the cheap publicity - FB should charge him for that.
Rushdie is a slimy, pretentious twat, whose output is best employed in the construction of papier-mache clown scarers. His dreary, self-congratulatory drivel is a depressing waste of dead trees, so this story of him finding something new to squinny about pleases me greatly.
Cheers, reg.
One of Life's Great Mysteries .............
How did Khomeini manage to wade through enough of Rushdie's claptrap to decree that Satanic Verses insulted Islam?
(If you know anyone who has read SV all the way through, you belong to the world's smallest minority group.)
Like so many idiots...
... Khomenei didn't actually bother reading the book before condemning it.
Rather like a lot of commentards on this thread...
Read it. Enjoyed it. Re-read it some years later.
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Minnesota Sees Marriage Rush
September 3, 2013 by HRC staff
Post submitted by Mitchell Scuzzarella, HRC Digital Media intern.
Same-sex couples claimed nearly 1 in 3 marriage licenses issued in Minnesota in the month following the state's new marriage equality law.
According to a statewide survey from the Associated Press, at least 1,640 same-sex couples applied for licenses since Minnesota became the 12th state with marriage equality.
Licenses became available to same-sex couples on August 1st, prompting the rush of marriage applications from couples that had long awaited their turn down the aisle.
"This is the product of people who were living in the legal wilderness for so long, suddenly no longer being told their relationships are substandard," said Sen. Scott Dibble, a sponsor of Minnesota's marriage equality bill. "There's an excitement out there right now. I've been going to so many weddings lately, it's like I'm two years out of college again."
According to the AP, the demand for licenses was highest in the metro areas, where 3 out of 4 licenses issued in the Hennepin and Ramsey counties were to gay and lesbian couples.
However, in each of the 40 counties where a constitutional ban had majority support, there was at least one application from a same-sex couple.
HRC was a key player in passing marriage equality in Minnesota, providing financial investment, staff and technical resources to the grassroots efforts of the Minnesotans United for All Families.
Minnesota for Marriage, the group that worked to defeat the marriage equality legislation, vowed last week to defeat lawmakers who supported the bill.
"We did not forget," said the group in an email to supporters.
Rep. Jay McNamar, one of swing votes on the issue, said he is ready to face the backlash.
"Come election time it will get brought up, I know that. But I don't regret what I did," said McNamar.
While the recent decision in Minnesota shows immense progress in the fight for marriage equality, much remains to be done. Learn more about the fight for marriage equality in your state at our Marriage Center.
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