Half Empty

Olson Alibi: A Bucket So Full of Holes It Won’t Hold Water

2008-10-15T16:31:00.002-05:00

I’ve mentioned this before in a previous posting. The Lone Star Project charged that Republican candidate for Congress in CD 22, Nick Lampson’s seat, none other than Peter G. Olson, has violated Virginia law in having voted in another state, Connecticut specifically, while a registered voter in Virginia.

It’s a felony offense.

Well today FortBendNow, which is watching this thing closely, took statements from the Olson campaign, statements on the lawsuit filed in Virginia. The lawsuit filed by the Lone Star Project.

From FortBendNow:

“In response to the complaint, Olson issued a statement through campaign spokesperson Amy Goldstein early Wednesday afternoon, saying that on the day of the Connecticut election, he was traveling between Washington and Texas. The campaign also provided a U.S. Senate travel voucher for Aug. 12-15, 2003 to document the trip.”

Oh well. Case closed, right? How could Pete Olson have cast a ballot in Newtown, Connecticut, where his parents live, when he was nowhere near Connecticut on the day of the special election?

Holy H-E-Double-Hockey Sticks they sure took care of that problem handily.

And then slam. Olson campaign spokesman Amy Goldstein said:

“… while a Peter G. Olson may have voted in the August, 2003 special election in Newtown, it was not candidate Olson.”

Well, obviously. The Peter G. Olson that cast the Connecticut ballot can’t be the candidate because the candidate was on a plane to Texas that day.

Oh, but wait. Waitaminute. Didn’t I also read that among the papers that the Lone Star Project submitted as evidence and basis for their lawsuit, they had copies of Pete Olson’s absentee ballot application? And didn’t I read that the address on the absentee ballot application that the absentee ballot was to be sent was Pete Olson’s home address in Virginia?

Our Pete Olson’s home address?

“The complaint also included a number of documents to support the charges, including Olson’s voter registration from Virginia; an absentee ballot request to Newtown, Conn., bearing the signature “Peter G. Olson;” a Connecticut voter registration for “Peter G. Olson” at the Newtown address of his parents; voter history documents from Connecticut; a voter roll from the Newtown Town Clerk’s office showing a “Peter G. Olson” voted in the special election in question and a document from the Fairfax County Board of Elections confirming that “both Peter and Nancy Olson voted in the November 2005 and November 2006 General Election.”

And this:

"The complaint alleged Olson requested an absentee ballot from Connecticut be sent to 7804 Ashley Glen Rd. in Annandale, Virginia."

OK, now do I have to put this together for you? OK, I will anyway. Pete Olson coulld have been on a slow boat to China on August 12, 2003 and it wouldn't matter. The fraudulent vote the lawsuit claims Pete Olson cast was an absentee ballot.

Voter need not be present to win.

Not only does Amy Goldstein have egg all over her face, but now it looks like Pete Olson’s pants are afire in public.

Too bad they can’t get a bucket to fill up with water and put out Pete’s pants. Like Pete’s alibi won’t hold water because it is full of holes, neither will their bucket and for the same reason.

Voting Locations in Fort Bend County: A Shell Game

2008-10-14T18:06:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago I mentioned in passing that it looked like the Fort Bend County elections office had unceremoniously changed the polling locations of precinct 2123.

It’s a little worse.

The polling locations of several precincts have been changed without word or warning. Thousands of voters could be left standing in front of a dark building on Election Day.

I view this as highly suspicious as I mentioned previously. This is a classic bait and switch voter suppression tactic.

And I wouldn’t be too concerned, but it looks like the county targeted two very Democratic precincts to do their nasty business. 2123 as previously reported, and also Precinct 1114, a precinct centered on the liberal leaning Teal Run development.
And I do mean liberal.

In 2006, voters in Teal Run, Precinct 1114 cast 760 straight Democratic votes (92% of all straight ticket votes cast in the precinct). In 2006 voters in Teal Run, Precinct 1114 cast 1016 votes for Barbara Ann Radnofsky who ran for US Senate against Kay Bailey Hutchison. That’s 83% of senate votes cast. Barbara Ann mustered just 36% of the vote statewide.

Precinct 2123, tucked in the far eastern corner of Fort Bend County, is even more impressively Democratic, percentage-wise anyway.

In 2006, voters in Precinct 2123 cast 314 straight Democratic votes (95% of all straight ticket votes cast in the precinct). In 2006 voters in Precinct 2123 cast 419 votes for Barbara Ann Radnofsky who ran for US Senate against Kay Bailey Hutchison. That’s 87% of senate votes cast.

But now, after voting in the same location for years, voters in 1114 and 2123 must find their way to new polling locations

Precinct 1114’s old location at Burton Elementary School is changed to Fort Bend County MUD 23, the M.R. Massey Admin B building.

Precinct 2123 old location at Meadowcreek Clubhouse is changed to Quail Valley Elementary School.

The democratic process, it seems, in Fort Bend County anyway, has become some sort of bizarre shell game with the pea being a place to cast your vote.

Quite frankly, the voting process in Iraq, blue thumbs and all, makes this democratic system look more like that of a banana republic’s.

Machiavelli would be pleased.

A Perfect Storm

2008-10-13T23:14:00.000-05:00

That was the title of a movie made not long ago. It chronicled the fate of a fishing boat that sailed to the Grand Banks one fateful day as the waves and violence generated by three separate storms at sea converged on just that one place on Earth.

The boat sank with all hands.

And now we have another perfect storm forming over the McCain campaign. It could not be better scripted had it come out of the think tank that is the Obama campaign.

John McCain selects a vice presidential candidate that wows a hungry right wing audience willing to drink any Kool-Aid that is distributed at their national convention. Never mind that Governor Palin is woefully under-qualified for the office. Never mind that she was branded last Friday as “unethical” by a bipartisan Alaska legislature committee that was assigned to look into the allegations that are now known as “Troopergate.” Never mind that she flopped answering the simple questions of Katie Couric (a media personality that is not known for her ambushes).

John McCain’s campaign has set out on a mission to defame Barack Obama as an associate of a man who was once a member of the Weather Underground, One who planted bombs in a war against another unpopular war. And in that endeavor, McCain reaped the reward of having followers who treasonously called for the murder of Barack Obama.

An outcome where McCain found himself in the impossible position of defending his political opponent.

And now, most recently we find that key rightist elements of McCain’s own party are calling for a dismissal of McCain’s entire campaign staff, as well as the discovery of actions (or is it inactions?) of the Republican governor of a key “swing state,” Florida by name, who decided that his personal appearance at Florida’s Disney World today was far more important than his appearance at a McCain rally in his own state.

Guys, I couldn’t have scripted this better than as a campaign in a tailspin.

This campaign has gone from the race that will be the Democrats’ to lose, to the race that the Republicans are throwing against the wall, hoping for some of it to stick.

Let me clue them in. Imploded campaigns and raw uncooked spaghetti do not stick to anything.

A Day At the Headquarters

2008-10-12T20:45:00.000-05:00

After watching my usual Sunday morning news programs, all the while assembling my brand spanking new Swiffer™ floor mop, I decided that before I went in to the headquarters to work for the forces of good, I would try out my Swiffer™. This thing is amazing. You can drive it into tiny nooks and pick up dust. So if you are thinking about buying one of those things, be assured that you will not be disappointed. Swiffers rock.

For a $20 mop, it had better.

Then I went in to the Rosenberg headquarters for the rest of the day.

There’s always a lot to do. We are gearing up for Get Out The Vote and so I thought we needed big charts of Early Voting locations for our phone bank, as well as little ones to post on our glass walls facing out. While doing that I noticed on the Fort Bend County Elections website that they moved another polling location.

Precinct 2123.

We looked it up, and Precinct 2123 has 746 Democratic voters in it. This is among the highest concentrations of Democrats in Fort Bend County.

This is why you need to have political diversity in county government. Otherwise what you get is systemic voter suppression.

So next on the list of things to do: cobble up a short informative note to these voters and print out mail labels for the post cards that we will be sending to 540 mailboxes.

Then Geri and Bev came in carrying a McCain/Palin yard sign and we all wondered what that was all about. It seems someone had snatched Geri’s Obama/Biden yard sign and slipped the McCain sign on the stake in its place. Well, I thought, at least now I have one of those signs to try out an idea of mine. You color in the L in Palin with a dark blue marking pen, instantly giving you what we will all experience if the unthinkable occurs: “McCain Pain”

Volunteers came in, students from a Sugar Land high school, and we set them to attaching labels to our door hangers, and then making yard signs. It is refreshing to see someone younger than 50 years old working with us for positive change.

Buyers of campaign paraphernalia streamed in and out all afternoon. We sold some yard signs to a couple from The Heights in Houston. They said that there was nothing like our place in Houston. Another couple from a more local area came in and bought yard signs and left a hefty donation. This was matched by a donation from a couple that came in to the headquarters the day before, making their donation today via Paypal. Michelle and her husband their toddler child came in and became entranced with our life-size freestanding photo cutout of Barack Obama and rued the fact that she had left her camera at home. I didn’t and snapped a photo of her standing next to Barack holding her daughter. I sent it off to her via email not 2 minutes ago.

It’s different every day and it is never boring working for Barack Obama and all Democrats on the ticket.

And you sometimes get to holler at some rabid, spittle spewing examples of the brand of Republicans we have here in Fort Bend County. Republican voters are getting madder than usual. And wouldn’t you be?

They sense impending calamity.

When Entrepreneurs Become Profiteers

2008-10-11T14:43:00.001-05:00

Ah capitalism. There’s nothing like the smell of capitalism in the morning. On the morning of a hurricane’s landfall, that is. It smells of . . . fetid turds.

Want to know why we are in a financial s**tstorm these days? Greed. Sheer greed. The greed of entrepreneurs. The greed of capitalists. The sheer greed of businessmen who will stop at nothing to get more for them and deprive everyone else of theirs; including breaking all the rules set against them to do this.

That’s why we are in this financial fix.

And greed isn’t just on Wall Street. It’s on Main Street as well. It’s among us.

The proof is in the pudding. When Governor Perry declared southeast Texas a disaster area, that immediately triggered state laws that prevent entrepreneurs from making obscene profits on the misfortunes of others.

But that didn’t stop the people who run the Hotel Nacogdoces in Nacogdoces, Texas from doubling their standard room rates of $49.99 a night to $99.99. Profiteering on the hard luck of Hurricane Ike evacuees.

That didn’t stop the people who run the Super 8 Brookshire Hotel in Katy, Texas from raising their room $99 per night room rate to $125 as Ike evacuees sought safe haven from a monster hurricane that was bearing down on their houses.

That didn’t stop gas stations from hiking their already burdensome prices all around the southeast.

No, it did not.

It seems we have a new plague that has spread across our country. It isn’t a biological plague, but a psychological one. The plague is called greed and while it has always been with us, it has been restricted to a small subpopulation of our society in the past.

In the past, most of us had a sense of fair play and empathy. Those two have been replaced by raw greed and it is more common than it has been in the past. More common because people have become aware of the fact that “greed is good” to abuse a quote from the movie Wall Street. Good because now it goes unpunished.

Greed is now rewarded.

Prove me wrong, I dare you.

Vote in the PBS Palin Poll

2008-10-10T17:58:00.000-05:00

I received an email from one of my California relatives today warning me about a Right Wing plan to stuff the ballot box in a PBS Online Poll. Here is what it says:

Subject: PBS Sarah Palin Poll

PBS has an online poll posted asking if Sarah Palin is qualified. Apparently the right wing knew about this in advance and are flooding the voting with YES votes.

The poll will be reported on PBS and picked up by mainstream media. It can influence undecided voters in swing states.

Please do two things -- takes 20 seconds.

1) Click on link and vote yourself. Here's the link: http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html

2) Then send this to every single Obama-Biden voter you know, and urge them to vote and pass it on.

The last thing we need is PBS saying their viewers think Sarah Palin is qualified.

I just voted and the vote is now a 49% to 49% split (2% not sure).

So in addition to everything else you are going to do today, do that, too, OK?

John Cornyn Wants Change . . . Or Maybe Not

2008-10-10T17:08:00.001-05:00

So I guess I was one of a few politics junkies that actually tuned in to the Senatorial debate last night. This race is really flying under the radar, and only pops up occasionally when you see a TV advertisement.

I am still meeting people who don’t know who John Cornyn is, let alone Rick Noriega. When I run into the odd one who knows who Cornyn is, typically they are glad to hear that he has an opponent.

But, these people will vote for a refrigerator if it is running against John Cornyn.

So if the debate last night was meant as a means to attract the attention of the voters, it fell flat on its face. Only we junkies tuned in, you see.

So if that is what the debate was meant to accomplish, and it didn’t, what DID the debate accomplish?

Well for one thing we all got to see John Cornyn speak out of both of his mouths simultaneously.

Only people who have two faces can do that, and John Cornyn definitely has two of them.

Illustration? Let’s take the example of John Cornyn’s laughable television ad. You’ve seen it. It is a video of John Cornyn taking a walk in the country with a herd of cows. Now you can tell that he doesn’t do that very often, he is a city boy through and through. And really, so am I. But I have spent enough time out in the field, on ranches, to know this: when you walk with a herd of cattle you must look down every once in awhile.

Look down to avoid stepping in a cow pie.

But no, John Cornyn kept his gaze firmly fixed on the far horizon in this video. So my guess is that when he was done with videotaping for the day he got one of his staffers to clean his boots.

So here we have a video of John Cornyn not looking down as he walks through a herd of cattle. And we also have the voiceover claiming that he is sick of how things have gotten in Washington and how he wrote a bill to change the way things are done. Yes, that’s right, John Cornyn has picked up the Change mantra of his party leader. The mantra that John McCain lifted from the Democratic campaign.

John Cornyn, agent for change.

That’s what he is saying out of one of his two mouths. Out of the other mouth? Now this is unbelievable. Out of the other mouth, John Cornyn said in the senatorial debate last night that “I am for the status quo.”

Let me repeat that. John Cornyn said “I am for the status quo.”

How, I must ask, can one be an agent for change when they are “for the status quo?” Now that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Another way to express “pro Change” is to say “Anti-status quo”

So is John Cornyn just two-faced or is it that he was for “Change” before he was against it?

Oh, and by the way, contrast Cornyn's "Cows" TV ad with Rick Noriega's. Compared to Rick's ad, one that is full of information and substance, Cornyn's ad looks like something he just stepped in.

Noriega/Cornyn Senatorial Debate On PBS Tonight

2008-10-09T10:04:00.001-05:00

The one and only time that Rick Noriega will be in a debate with Big Bad John Cornyn that will be seen throughout Texas is tonight. You will be able to see it on any PBS television station that broadcasts in Texas. It will be a one hour debate beginning at 8 PM. The Libertarian candidate will also be included in this debate for those who still have not gotten over Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

The debate comes at an interesting moment in the Noriega campaign, as it was just announced yesterday that Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer had written off Texas, saying that Texas was out of reach. Or at least that is what they were saying at MSNBC. They later corrected themselves. From MSNBC:

“For the record, Schumer said Texas might be difficult. He declared it ‘expensive. That’s the problem.’”
Which is exactly why Schumer and others were simply drooling at Mikal Watts’ self-funded campaign early last year.

Drooling.

Then later, Rick Miller, a Schumer staffer, came back and made it clear that MSNBC got it wrong. All wrong. From The Chron’s political blog

“But late this afternoon, Schumer spokesman Matt Miller said MSNBC had misunderstood what Schumer was saying. Miller said Schumer was saying the committee was not spending any money on television advertising in Texas right now because the state is too big and too expensive. Miller said that did not mean Schumer was giving up on Noriega. ‘We're in no way writing off Texas, and it doesn't mean he (Noriega) won't get some money in the future,’ Miller said.”
Well I’m glad they cleared that one up before the debate. It would be pretty difficult to face an opponent who knows that his own party has written off the race as unwinnable.

Now I guess we are all wondering about how far into “the future” Miller was talking about. Because if "the future" is further than 26 days away, I guess they can keep their money.

Barack Obama Is That One

2008-10-08T17:17:00.000-05:00

Remember Richard Nixon? I am not only old enough to remember him (he bore an uncanny resemblance to my childhood dentist), I remember his campaign song and slogan. Yes, for awhile there, we had campaign songs. Not like what we have now. Original music and lyrics.

Nixon’s campaign slogan, and the title of his campaign song, was Nixon is The One.

Being called “The One” is apparently not a bad thing at all. The band Orleans made a mint on a song with “the one” in its title.

But being called “That One” is bad. It’s very bad. African-Americans point out that it is racist. I didn’t know that, but they said that when they heard those words that John McCain uttered last night, their take was that it was a racist remark. Here read it for yourself:

“‘It speaks to the fundamental belief of racism: despite all evidence to the contrary, you are inherently beneath me simply by virtue of the melanin content of your skin,’ Ciji McBride, a 33-year-old sales professional in Los Angeles, said Wednesday.”
“Don Hammonds of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also took offence.”

“‘Regardless of intent, it showed Senator McCain to be culturally ignorant, and completely unaware of the implications of what his off-the-cuff statement meant to people of colour,’ he wrote.”

“‘Whether Senator McCain meant it that way or not, if you are a person of colour, and someone trots out the 'that one' remark, you instantly take it as racist. I know that I did.’”

Being called “The One” is a compliment. Any doubters should ask Tom “Neo” Anderson about that. But being called “That One” is like using the “N” word. It’s a code word for a man with a tan.

So the question is, was this a Fordian “Poland moment?” The same man’s famous nose dribble moment on national TV? Is this Richard Nixon debating Jack Kennedy, showing his shifty eyes to American voters?

Did we just hear McCain say “Macaca?”

Should pundits now refer to the Republican presidential candidate as John McCaca?

Gross Observations on the CNN “Uncommitted Crawl”

2008-10-07T22:01:00.001-05:00

For tonight’s presidential debate I decided to break with the past and watch it on CNN. That way I can observe the “uncommitted crawl” that they feature. Tonight CNN featured a real time metering of positive or negative feelings that Ohio uncommitted voters had on the statements and answers from our two candidates.

Why not look at this before? I am with my liberal activist colleagues here. Who cares what an uncommitted Ohio voter thinks? What the heck, if you are uncommitted at this point in the game what business do you have voting in this election? The choices cannot be clearer. They are crystal clear. As clear as ever presented to American voters in decades.

But that is precisely what lured me to CNN. I had to have a look. I had to see what these uncommitted voters are going through.

It was instructive.

First, it taught me that men are wildly emotional, and women are very conservative in issuing a swing in sentiment. More often than not men were either wildly supportive of a candidate’s position, or more negatively supportive. With some exceptions, women varied only slightly.

Doesn’t that run up against conventional wisdom?

So much for conventional wisdom.

Second it taught me that when McCain lies, and he knows when he is lying, uncommitted voters know he is lying as well, and either went neutral over his commentary period, or went slightly negative.

Both sexes.

Third, it taught me that when Obama was delivering positive points it gave him high positive marks. When McCain delivered positive points, it gave him mediocre positive marks.

In my gross, and fairly reasonably unbiased (if that is even possible here) rating, Obama’s positives out did McCain’s.

In other words, uncommitted voters responded more positively to Obama’s positives, and responded neutrally or even negatively, when McCain went on the attack in his “lying mode.” That is, whenever John McCain adopted the Republican line of “The Big Lie,” that is, lie often and lie well, uncommitted voters were unresponsive.

They didn’t buy it.

Signaling, I think, a corner turn. Americans have turned the corner on their reception of whoppers. Americans are willing to listen to a narrative rather than a lie.

Maybe, just maybe, Americans, through our impossibly uncommitted numbers, are finally growing up.

The Keating 5 and John McCain

2008-10-06T18:05:00.000-05:00

With the Dow down 800 points at one point today, what do McCain and Palin talk about? Well one thing they didn’t talk about today was the financial crisis in the credit market. Instead of making a strong case for more government regulation of the financial markets and banking, Governor Palin concentrated on former Weather Underground member and Obama acquaintance, Bill Ayers, and on Obama’s former preacher. John McCain also took that tack, but also tried to associate Barack Obama with Chicago-style politics.

It’s just that they can’t talk about the financial crisis. They can’t talk about it because this crisis bears such a huge resemblance to the Savings and Loan Meltdown of the late 80’s that it just won’t do to talk about it.

Because John McCain was neck deep in the politics and the economics that lead up to the federal government’s bailout of 747 savings and loan institutions, including the one owned by Charles Keating - Lincoln Savings and Loan.

What is true is that John McCain supported deregulation of the S$L industry, just as he has supported deregulation of banks. S&Ls were allowed to invest in more risky ventures, and while things were looking up, everyone made money. Just as we had people making money while banks were making bad investments in sub-prime mortgages and everything was copasetic as long as the housing market went up and up.

McCain was caught up in the scandal, and was one of the Keating 5 along with John Glenn, Alan Cranston, Dennis DiConcini, and Don Riegle. At first, McCain, who had received campaign contributions from Keating, exerted pressure on federal S&L investigators at the behest of Keating. When the investigators disclosed that Lincoln was under criminal investigation for a number of charges, McCain flipped and cut off all contact with Keating.

McCain was later admonished by an investigating Senate panel and was told that he exercised “poor judgment.”

These things are coming out again. Partly in response to the verbal attacks on Obama’s character – attacks that one has to complete several leaps of logic to understand where they are coming from. And partly because they are germane to today’s issues.

Issues like how McCain was for deregulation before he was against it.

Issues like how McCain simply cannot learn from his past mistakes.

Issues like how McCain has, in his own colleagues’ opinion, “poor judgment.”

So the last thing McCain will do is talk about what is on the minds of Americans from coast to coast. Instead he and Palin attempted to change the subject once again. A move right out of page 17 of Karl Rove’s playbook.

I don’t think it’s going to work this time, though. This isn’t a trivial issue they are trying to lay diversions around. This is rapidly becoming THE issue.

Ignoring THE issue will only make McCain seem more and more irrelevant.

Because the relevance of John McCain in the financial crisis is not necessarily something McCain wants to talk about. Like the relevance shown in Barack Obama’s latest mini documentary on how relevant John McCain is on the issue.

General Wes Clark Speaks At the Johnson-Rayburn-Richards Dinner

2008-10-05T15:15:00.000-05:00

How I got to go to the annual Johnson-Rayburn-Richards dinner in Houston last night is a rather complicated story. Let’s just say that I know a couple who are lifelong Democrats, and they were invited by Leslie Taylor to sit at her table at the dinner, but my good friend Susan just wanted a night to relax and do some laundry. So I went with her “Bubba.” Because Bubba broke his wrist planting Obama/Biden 4 x 4s all over Fort Bend County, I figured I would have to cut his food up, but Bubba managed just fine.

I did, too. Especially when I learned that not only did Leslie Taylor have a VIP table, enabling us to mingle in the VIP room with an open bar, but also that her table was right down in front. I decided to video General Clark’s speech, well as much of his speech as my 5 gig flash drive would store, anyway, and had a great seat to do just that.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I found that I had captured all 30 minutes of General Clark’s speech. And I was dumbfounded when I discovered that there was 1.6 gigabytes of space remaining. So had I known, I could have also videoed Chris Bell as he read Sarah Palin’s letter to General Clark.

Anyhoo . . .

YouTube has a time/size limit so I broke up the speech into 4 parts, each of which has its own theme.

Here is Part 1 – I call it “Eight Years and Four Crises.”

Here is Part 2 – Let’s call this one “New Ideas in 2008.”

Part 3 I like to call “Their Ideas Don’t Work”

And finally, Wes Clark concluded with an exhortation to his audience to be ambassadors of new ideas to those around them, friends, relatives, work mates. People don’t make decisions by watching the news, says General Clark. They make decisions by talking to other people. For this reason Wesley Clark called for his audience to “Go Hug a Republican.”

Now I have to ask this question. Do you think Barack Obama will have a place for General Clark in his administration? That has got to be a big affirmative, hasn’t it?

It's Party Time In Fort Bend County

2008-10-04T14:20:00.000-05:00

Look at what I found in my mailbox today.

Obama Supporter: A Pariah in His Own Neighborhood

2008-10-04T12:48:00.003-05:00

I was at the Fort Bend Democrats’ Rosenberg headquarters yesterday evening. While I was trying to watch Keith Olberman on the big screen TV, Marsha shoved a piece of yellow lined notebook paper under my nose.

I assumed from that, that she wanted me to read it.

So I read it.

It was a statement from a guy who lives in my development. A guy who witnessed two men stealing his two Obama yard signs from his front lawn and driving off with them.

Here, I’ll just let you read the statement. I edited out some of the locations:

“I work from my home and saw two men up in my driveway and steal my Obama signs. 2 of them that were in my front yard. I jumped in my car and caught up with them and demanded my signs back. The two men gave my signs back and I noticed that they had a car full of Barack Obama signs. They must have stolen all of them in the neighborhood. As the guys gave me the signs a lady saw what was happening and cussed me, even after I told her what was going on. She saw my signs and she said “Those signs are worthless anyway. I’m glad they took them.” Then another man walked up to me and cussed me out as well. I could not believe it. I tried to explain to him what happened and he called me a “hippie.” With the encounters with my neighbors, I was unable to get the license plate number of the car, but I recognized the gentleman. 1 works at Quizno’s on [location deleted] and the other at Randall’s in [my development]. It is not easy being a Democrat in [my development].

Well that solved one mystery. The mystery of where my white "Obama '08" sign went off to. I've had it since February, but it was stolen last week. I immediately replaced it with one of those brand new Obama/Biden signs. I noted this morning that it's still there along with my "Had Enough? Vote Democratic for a change . . ." sign. The one that suffered a "lay down" earlier this week.

And yes, that's Hurricane Ike debris. Still not picked up by the trash hauling service that I pay for.

Marsha later told me that the guy went to the Randall’s store and confronted the sign stealing employee in front of the store’s manager. He claimed to be asleep at the time of the theft. Apparently he then went to file a complaint at the county sheriff’s office.

Can you imagine how the sheriff’s office will react to an eye-witness account of petty thievery of Democratic yard signs? Personal knowledge of the thieves’ identities?

Yeah, I agree. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the dragnet.

McClellan or McKiernan?

2008-10-03T17:55:00.002-05:00

Which general do you suppose was Sarah Palin talking about last night? Lots of people want to know. It has to be why Joe Biden was inwardly laughing at the debate last night. The last thing he was going to do was correct Palin. It would have been like a father correcting a daughter.

It would have been fun to watch, but Joe Biden judiciously let it slide. It would come up in the aftermath, anyway.

Besides, now we not only have Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to hold over the head of the McCain/Palin campaign – a man John McCain simply refuses to sit down and talk to – we now have General George Brinton McClellan – the man that Sarah Palin trusts and respects. This particular general was fired by President Abraham Lincoln after he failed to hold off Robert E. Lee’s army in the War of Northern Aggression.

Oh, well. To Sarah Palin, who governs that big state up there, one Mick must look and sound like another.

Is Pete Olson Guilty of Voter Fraud?

2008-10-02T17:54:00.001-05:00

Voter Fraud. A Republican mantra these days if ever there was one. To the extent that Indiana now has a law on the books, upheld by the US Supreme Court, that allows it to require that voters present a photo ID at their polling place to verify their identity.

To make sure that they aren’t voting fraudulently.

Like, apparently, Pete Olson did in 2003. Yes, that Pete Olson, the guy who is the Republican nominee to run against Nick Lampson for his Texas CD 22 seat in the US Congress.

That Pete Olson.

It is all in a Lone Star Project email blast that is summarized in the current posting at the Lone Star Project’s website.

The Lone Star Project has papers that they say prove that in 2003, Pete Olson voted in the 2003 Virginia general election, but also voted that year in a special election in Newtown, Connecticut. This based on the fact that he owned property in Newtown. And before that, voted in Virginia.

Virginia state law strictly forbids its residents from being registered to vote in Virginia AND another state. Something Pete Olson has to answer for.

Because, according to Lone Star, that is a felony offense in Virginia.

As it should be.

Hey, I own property in California, but I never, ever even considered registering to vote there based on that residence address.

That would be wrong.

And Pete Olson should know better (and probably does).

The Biden/Palin Debate Spin is In

2008-10-01T19:29:00.003-05:00

They’re not even waiting for Joe Biden to utter one sentence tomorrow. We all now know why Sarah Palin isn’t going to do well in her upcoming debate with Vice-Presidential candidate Joe Biden: Gwen Ifill.

Gwen Ifill is moderating the debate tomorrow night. Gwen Ifill is an African-American journalist who hosts “Washington Week” on PBS. She makes her living moderating.

But now we are being told that Gwen Ifill is one of those liberal media types. It first showed up on a conservative blog. But it got picked up by the Drudge Report and now it is all over the mainstream media.

How is Gwen Ifill now a member of the lefty media? How did this conservative blogger arrive at this genius?

Gwen Ifill is writing a book about African-Americans who are rising on the political scene. One of the ones she writes about is Barack Obama.

Some surprise.

But now we are hearing a spin that because Gwen Ifill has written a book, an analysis of black candidates in this year’s election, a book that is set to go on sale on Inauguration Day mind you, Gwen Ifill is somehow biased and will try and torpedo Sarah Palin.

If Sarah Palin implodes in St. Louis, it isn’t because she has a poor grasp of the facts and rotten judgment to boot, it’s because Gwen Ifill was hiding in the bushes and sandbagged her without warning.

What makes this whole thing ludicrous is that no one has read Gwen Ifill’s book but her editors. There are no advance copies out. And whoever the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks this conservative blogger is, the one who first dreamed up this oeuvre, HE didn’t read the book either.

But somehow the sketch of the content, as obtained from its title “Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.” is enough. Enough for conservatives to paint “flaming liberal” all over Gwen Ifill.

I am now waiting for the hue and cry to begin about replacing Gwen Ifill as moderator for tomorrow’s debate. Replacing her with, say, Sean Hannity. I hear that he wrote a book, too.

Reappraise Damaged Property? In Your Dreams

2008-09-30T17:01:00.000-05:00

In a joint statement by Republican candidates John Zerwas, running for re-election in Texas HD 28, and Austen Furse, running badly behind in the Texas SD 17 special election, county appraisal districts should re-appraise property damaged by Hurricane Ike.

“This allows the people who lose their homes or suffer significant damage to pay only the fair property tax for the portion of the year after their homes were damaged or destroyed. This is a common-sense solution that is not too much to ask for our homeowners.”
Zerwas and Furse, it seems, read the Texas Tax Code and it says that if reappraisals are authorized, homeowners can ask for one.

Right.

State Rep. John Zerwas, and apparently Austen Furse may be, or want to be in the business of cutting taxes because taxpayers love their tax cuts, but county governments these days definitely are not.

In fact, the state’s tax revenues have shifted so much, thanks to the efforts of Zerwas and his ilk, that local entities have had to make up for their work by busily reappraising home property values up and up and up.

And these reappraisals have even driven up homeowners’ insurance policies because their properties’ replacement value is based on the appraised value.

So, puh-leeze, give me a break. This is just so much stuff and nonsense. A joint statement from the very kind who are responsible for property appraisals going up in the first place, urging county entities to lower homeowners’ appraisals?

Do they think we are as stupid as the McCain campaign thinks we are?

777

2008-09-29T17:33:00.002-05:00

Knock, knock

Who’s there?

Fallin’

Fallin’ who?

Fallin’ into a depression.

Today, Wall Street served up the single largest drop, 777 points, in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, better known as “The Dow,” in the history of the index.

Further than it fell following 9/11.

In one fell swoop investors pockets are now 7% lighter than they were yesterday, all because of partisan posturing in the US Congress.

My congressman, Congressman Nick Lampson voted against the bailout bill. He explained himself in this email message:

“Tens of thousands of Southeast Texans are working to put their lives back together, and the last thing we should do is dump truck loads of taxpayer dollars into the wallets of erratic Wall Street traders.”

“I will vote NO today on saddling taxpayers with this exorbitant bill which amounts to $2,500 for every man, woman and child. I am outraged at this proposal and will continue to fight to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, not carelessly.”

“The American taxpayer should not, must not, and cannot be viewed as an insurance policy for the misdeeds of Wall Street tycoons. Please join me in calling all elected officials and the leadership of both parties to fight against this bad policy.”

Now here’s what I think.

I think Lampson and the 95 odd Democrats and the 133 Republicans who voted against this bill need to consider whether their solution, let the market self-correct and let the freebooters on Wall Street fail and die, is in the interests of the people. True this bailout amounts to nothing less than corporate extortion, pay or we’ll kill your jobs and retirement. All true. But we have to consider if this threat is real, and if so, consider whether we are prepared to accept the consequences of not paying off the ransom.

Lampson and other fiscal conservatives have essentially called on this bet, and Wall Street responded by extracting 7% of our total wealth.

I tell you, I would be more comfortable with this if the opponents to the bailout would come up with something better than “the free market will self-correct.”

Because this “free market” is anything but free. It’s being run by kleptomaniacs and it is being overseen by kleptomaniacs.

Kleptomaniacs and bad parents.

Bad parents because what we are witnessing is congress, acting as a parent who discovers that their errant children have been caught shoplifting, and are about to be thrown in the slammer. Their reaction? Yell at their kids for being thieves. Hope that they’ll learn their lesson when they spend the night in jail. Let them fend for themselves in the courts. Let them serve their sentences.

That’s a bad parent. A good parent would do what they could to see that their children come out of this with as few bruises as possible, and then work on correcting their behavior with discipline and regulation of behavior.

Seven years ago, Phil Gramm and others of his ilk turned the markets into an unregulated mess, and this melt-down was predicted 7 years ago. Phil Gramm isn’t the bad parent. He is the guy who gave the children on Wall Street the idea to go out and shoplift in the first place.

Phil Gramm and others of his ilk should be the first to be stripped of all wealth in this bailout.

And the entire bunch should be exiled to a small deserted island in the Caribbean where they can have all of the unregulated free markets they want.

What Do You Say To Republicans Who Ask What Has Barack Obama Accomplished?

2008-09-28T17:27:00.000-05:00

Republicans love to ask that question. You know why? Because it immediately puts you on the defensive. A place that they like you to be.

Yesterday at the Fort Bend County Fair, I was trying to sell campaign buttons and T-shirts, and an old guy, well, a guy about my age, came up and started a harangue on Obama. “I can’t believe you are voting for him! Why are you voting for him,” he sputtered.

While I suspected that he was asking why I, an older white man, was voting for a man of mixed parentage, I tend to stay away from playing the race card.

Then he played the “defend yourself”card and asked me what had Barack Obama done in his political career that made me most proud of him.

Now I could have bitten in and mentioned the legislation he put through in his two terms as Illinois State Senator. Like the way Obama supported, in a bi-partisan way, then Governor George Ryan’s initiative to block the predatory lending practices way back in 2001. Practices that have led up to our current financial crisis.

Or like how he sponsored and led the bipartisan passage of Illinois’ Racial Profiling law, a law that required Illinois law enforcement to record the race of people that they detain in their reports, as well as legislation that required video taping of all homicide interrogations – the first law of its kind ever passed in the nation.

Or I could have defended myself by citing Barack Obama’s US Senate accomplishments like the Obama-Lugar Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, a bill that requires full disclosure of all entities and organizations receiving Federal funds.

But I chose not to.

Instead, this is how I answered him: I became most proud of Barack Obama the day he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. Here was a man, a black man in America, who was audacious enough to think that Democratic Americans would nominate him as their candidate, and then a majority of Americans of all parties would elect a bi-racial man their 44th president.

I was proud of him because he had the wisdom and judgment to see what I could not see. He saw that Americans – or a great many of them anyway - have entered the “post racial era.” It took me some time to get on board because I doubted my fellow Americans were ready for this.

But no longer.

This is how I answered him. He didn’t like my answer because I was not placed on the defensive. In fact, instead of me being on the defensive, he now was.

And he quickly left so I could resume my task of collecting donations from the people who had crowded around trying to buy campaign buttons, bumper stickers and T-shirts.

Who Won the Debate Last Night?

2008-09-27T18:52:00.001-05:00

If you are a regular reader of this blog, and I know that 6 of you are, you know that I have very strong opinions on how my candidate fared in his first debate against John “I know how” McCain.

Barack CREAMED McCain.

Now I know that not everyone shares my view. Like just about everyone who votes a straight ticket for the party of the Dark Side.

It’s true. The Fort Bend Democrats have a booth at this year’s county fair and the overwhelming consensus among the nasty people who stopped by to unleash their bile on us was that McCain was victorious.

Here, by the way, is what the booth looks like in case you miss it in Exhibition Hall C.

But the people who stopped by to make donations for our campaign buttons, signs and T-shirts seemed to be of the opposite opinion.

Isn’t that surprising?

And now David Plouffe, of the Obama campaign, provided Obama’s supporters with the results of the CBS and CNN News poll taken after the debate:

In a CBS News poll, uncommitted voters see Barack as the debate winner. When it comes to the economy, 66% say Barack would make the right decisions versus 42% for McCain.The CNN poll results were also clear:
Who did the best job tonight?
Barack: 51 McCain: 38
Who would better handle Iraq?
Barack: 52 McCain: 47
Who would better handle the economy?
Barack: 58 McCain: 37

This is not the news that the McCain campaign needs right now. He needed a clear win to erase the effects that resulted from his wildly careening statements on the economy last week, and his “campaign suspension” that never was.

He needed a clear incontestable win, and he didn’t get it.

Know why?

My humble opinion is that in this race, Republicans and Democrats have switched roles. They traded sound bites with wordy pitches. Karl Rove knows how to do sound bites and zingers. He knows that these are two things that Americans love. They don’t like to read lots of words, let alone listen to them. They want short sentences that will entertain them.

And they love zingers.

McCain is incapable of either. Instead he drones on and on about two letters that General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote on the eve of D-Day. He drones on and on about a bracelet that the mother of a fallen Iraq War soldier asked him to wear (that I wanted to see him hold up). Barack Obama just said “I have a bracelet, too,” and the crowd roared.

Sound bites and zingers. If you don’t have them, or don’t know how to use them, you have no business running for President of the United States in the 21st century.

Flashy Fair Float Forges Friends, Fielded Friday

2008-09-27T00:15:00.001-05:00

Before the 1st presidential debate on Friday, a debate that Barack Obama won handily by the way, the Fort Bend Democrats launched its first attempt at an honest to God authentic parade float.

We did it with strangers who became friends, working together after toiling in offices, stores and classrooms. We did it. We turned a sow’s ear into a silk purse. You saw the before picture. Now look at our float during its stages of transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis.

There were two rules.

1) It had to be blue (and red and white).
2) It had to be shiny.

A good friend of mine says that you can never have too much shiny.

First we set the stage and floors.

Yep. Still ugly.

Then on goes the shiny.

Then the floozy fringe. This is what makes a float a float. If you don’t have this you have a utility trailer with lipstick.
Then our “Biden Blue” heart.

The letters are laid out.

Then the sweat started pouring and no one had time to take photos until we had our trailer transformed.
Then it was time to transform the red pickup truck into “shiny”.

The finished product. Yes that’s Hurricane Ike damage on the roof.
Comes Friday.

The butterfly emerges from its cocoon.

And flies by the Fort Bend Democrats whose headquarters are about half way down the parade route.

I don’t care what anyone else says. I think this project, to turn an old rust bucket utility trailer into Hollywood was wildly successful.

And now, having seen John McCain get thrashed by deadly zingers from the next president of the United States, truly the foreboding of a “shiny” future.

Fort Bend County Fair Parade: We Have a Float

2008-09-25T17:13:00.000-05:00

Amid everything going on in DC with bailout negotiations and the Bush meeting with McCain, Obama, and congressional leadership, amid all of that, Fort Bend County is opening its annual county fair tomorrow, and it will be kicked off by the annual Fair Parade.

The Fort Bend Democrats will not only have a booth, a big old booth, in the Exhibition Hall, but this year they have entered a float in the parade.

That’s what I have been doing the past couple of nights, building this float.

Speaking of putting lipstick on a pig (or is it a hockey mom?) we have a very unique task this year. It involves turning a 16-foot long ancient utility trailer, every square inch of it covered with thick rust, into a thing of real beauty.

Check back tomorrow and see if we succeeded.

McCain Calls Time-Out

2008-09-24T17:48:00.000-05:00

What is the first thing a basketball coach does when his team is behind in points and the clock is ticking toward zero?

Exactly.

He calls a time out.

This is what John McCain did today. Behind in the polls and sinking with each day’s news of financial crisis, how he is self-admittedly not an expert on economics, and how Barack Obama is increasingly being seen as the candidate who is most likely to deal with a financial crisis effectively and with good judgment. How McCain reacts to the news of impending financial disaster by lashing out at SEC chairman Christopher Cox threatening to fire him (made especially poignant with the news that a president actually does not have the power to fire the SEC chairman), and how Obama has responded with measured judgment that addresses key concerns voiced from both sides of the aisle.

So John McCain called “time out” today, announcing that he was suspending his campaign “to return to Washington to help broker a deal to save the financial industry,” to quote Chris Cillizza who pens WaPo’s “The Fix” blog.

Are you kidding? Didn’t we all hear John McCain say that he was “no expert” at economics? So now he is going to lend his expertise in brokering a deal? I’m sorry; I have to have a reality check here. Below is a 13 second clip of McCain’s chat at a Concord, New Hampshire town hall meeting early this year.

Asphinctersayswhat?

Believe me, the last guy I want in Washington working this deal is this rank amateur, John McCain. This is a combination of grandstanding in the extreme, and a strategic stall to save his falling numbers.

Grandstanding. McCain claims that negotiations on the bailout have entered a morass and are unlikely to be settled anytime soon. But just a few minutes ago, Congressman Barney Frank, interviewed on MSNBC, who is working this problem, claimed not only that the deal was close to agreement, as in “in a few days”, but that McCain’s help wasn’t really needed.

Strategic Stall. The last thing McCain needs right now is to face Barack Obama in public debate. Even if it is on an unrelated matter, like foreign policy, this debate can easily be turned into a shooting match over finances.

And that is the last thing McCain wants.

So is this debate going to go or is Obama going to be alone onstage this Friday? Obama has indicated no intent to suspend his campaign. To do so would be to allow McCain to lead. On the other hand, should McCain bow out, what does that do to his argument about wanting to have all of those town halls with Obama, and Obama not agreeing? Now we have McCain ducking behind skirts on an imagined crisis.

Frankly, this is a real exposé on what we can expect from a John McCain presidency. Ducking out, cutting and running when the heat gets turned up. Concocting an excuse based on faulty intelligence to do something, or not do something as the case may be.

Geez, who does that sound like?

Exactly.

Will Hurricane Victims Be Able to Vote?

2008-09-23T17:17:00.001-05:00

Lots of people are talking about what hurricane victims that have been displaced from their homes can do about voting in the upcoming general election. The Secretary of State has weighed in on this serious matter. Go here for a look at what the SOS has to say.

Now the reason I posted this link is that I am a little concerned about a bit of misinformation at the Houston Chronicle.

Here is what they say:

“People who want to return home but don't know when that will be possible can maintain their current voter registration and request a mail ballot from their home county election office. Applications must be received by Oct. 28.”

What is not clear in this is that it looks like you can request a mail in ballot if you are not sure when you will be returning to your residence. Be aware that this option is only granted if you declare that you will be out of the county during the election, and the mailing address you provide to them to send the ballot is one outside the county. There is no way they will send an absentee ballot to your residence.

I know, it sounds like a fine point of distinction, but I tripped over that statement when I read it, knowing that this was incomplete in some way.

A possible pitfall in an election where a voter does not get to have his vote count.

And we don’t want that to happen again, do we?