Houston mayoral debate tonight

There was also one last night, which I skipped, and two more after tonight, one of which has been previously advanced.

Univision 45/KXLN-TV and ABC-13/KTRK-TV have joined to co-host the Houston Mayoral Debate, streaming it live from the University of Houston-Downtown at One Main Street, Houston, Texas at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 2nd. The Houston Mayoral Debate will feature runoff candidates Bill King and Sylvester Turner and will be accessible live on-air on KTRK-TV abc13 and online at www.abc13.com and www.univision45.com. Simultaneous Spanish-language translation will be available on Univision 45's website and will air the same day at 10 p.m. The debate will be presented in partnership with the University of Houston-Downtown and Mi Familia Vota.

Univision is the most-watched television network in Houston. How's the ad rotation between King and Turner over there?  Anybody who knows want to say?

ABC-13's Erik Barajas and Univision 45's Rebecca Suarez will moderate the debate. The audience will be by invitation only; however, Houston voters are encouraged to submit their questions in English or Spanish by posting them to twitter using #ABC13VOTE.

In other election news...

That's my state representative, Borris Miles, in the top left corner.  Next to him is Dr. Alma Allen and former council contender Laurie Robinson, and the bottom row, left to right, is Harold Dutton, Willie Alexander, and Garnet Coleman.  Former Texpatriate blogger Noah Horwitz, whose father challenged Christie in 2013, also declared on his FB page that he was voting for Christie.

NO.  Just no.

These are Democrats -- some of whom allege themselves to be 'progressive' -- recommending a vote for a conservative Republican who stands firm against influenza vaccines, saying "you don't die from the flu".  (In the United States of America, the number of deaths from the flu -- not complications from it but the illness itself -- is a number estimated to be between a few hundred to a few thousand annually.  Most are children or elderly who don't receive the vaccine.  Christie was the only 'no' on city council two years ago to accept federal dollars for flu shots for Houstonians.)

Yes, it is accurate to say that Sharon Moses, the so-called Democrat in the runoff against Christie, sucks.  But she doesn't suck so hard that you should be voting for this. fucking. guy.  That makes you a moron, not a lofty non-partisan.

Your best vote other than nobody in this race is to write in Cthulhu, the least worst of three evils.

This is the dumbest thing I have seen a bunch of local Democrats do yet.

The faces of American domestic terrorism

Some might be inclined to call them Christian terrorists (in the same vein as "Islamic terrorists") but I'm not certain without Googling -- which I'm disinclined to do -- whether that is the case for all of those pictured.  It certainly is for Robert Dear, despite what Ted Cruz demagogues says.

Let's stick with 'American terrorists' for the moment, without referring to their religious affiliation, or their race, their political ideology, or even their psychological state.  They and their peers have many of those things in common, but for the purpose of this exercise let's not make the same mistakes conservatives make in generalization.  Kindly take note -- presuming you're familiar with their faces and backstories, of course -- of their different motivations for carrying out their terrorist acts.

Paraphrasing the words attributed to PA state representative Brian Sims, quoted in this Facebook meme (scroll down):

"These are the very familiar faces of terrorism in America. They are not members of ISIS, or Hamas, or the Crips. They are neither Muslim nor atheist. They don't have brown skin, they don't wear a keffiyah or a hoodie. They didn't come to the United States from across the southern border, or on a boat or a raft. They weren't escaping genocide or fleeing a ruthless dictator. They aren't refugees, or 'Ill Eagles', or 'thugs', or foreigners.

"They're all ours, America. What are we going to do about them?"

I'm taking ownership of this very serious problem by using "our" and not "their" in the next-to-last sentence.  Because we're all in this together.

The suggestion box is open.  Who'd like to go first?

Ted Cruz is a transgendered leftist activist

Just like Donald Trump, out to destroy the Republican Party from within.

Speaking with reporters following the (shootings at a Colorado Planned Parenthood), Cruz rejected suggestions that the shooter was part of the anti-abortion movement, taking issue with the “vicious rhetoric on the left blaming those who are pro-life.”

Robert Lewis Dear, 57, was taken into custody Friday night after allegedly opening fire inside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, killing three and injuring nine others.

When a reporter reminded the Texas senator that the suspect allegedly made a comment about “baby parts” while being arrested, Cruz countered, “It’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a woman and transgendered leftist activist, if that’s what he is.”

Dear’s voter registration, where he is listed as a woman, was uncovered by the Gateway Pundit, a self-described "right-of-center news website."

“We know that he was a man who was registered to vote as a woman,” Cruz said. “The media promptly wants to blame him on the pro-life moment when at this point there is very little evidence to suggest that.”

The appropriate response, from Jon Green at AMERICAblog.

Cruz is referring to right wing bloggers, who reported on Saturday that Dear is listed as female on his voter registration. It appears that, like Bill O’Reilly, he checked the wrong box on his form.

Cruz’s campaign later clarified that Cruz didn’t mean to imply that Dear was actually a “transgendered leftist activist,” but rather that “there isn’t enough information.” In other words, it’s just as likely that Dear is exactly who he says he is as compared to a ridiculous caricature of what the right wing imagines white criminals to be. You see a radical conservative Christian, Gateway Pundit sees the opposite. HOW CAN WE TELL THE DIFFERENCE???

Aside from Dear’s penchant for handing anti-Obama literature to complete strangers.

Cruz’s is a particularly lazy form of misdirection, to say nothing of a drastic deviation from the conclusions he was more than willing to jump to following the Paris attacks. He might as well have said that some people think cucumbers taste better pickled. While no less ridiculous, at least that bit of misdirection would have been true.

The somewhat less than appropriate response, from me:

Ted Cruz likes his pickled cucumbers deep up his ass, with a side order of tossed salad.  As far as we know.  That has been reported in the media (this blog).

So if this is how the next twelve months is going to go, we might as well be prepared to counter their facts with some facts of our own.  Right?

Update: "Ted Cruz says there is no ‘war on women’ because we don’t have a condom shortage"

Republicans are not against contraceptives. I've used many different kinds of birth control because it's hard to find extra small condoms.

— Speaker Cruz (@HavanaTed) December 1, 2015

December 14 is the deadline to file as a candidate for office

Kuff has already endorsed Steve Brown's candidacy -- announced via Tweet -- for HD 27, the incumbent having possibly spent Thanksgiving in the Harris County jail.  Former appeals court justice Morris Overstreet has declared his intention to challenge Kim Ogg and the oafish Lloyd Oliver for Harris County District Attorney in the Democratic primary (don't miss the hilarious comments on Overstreet's bid at Murray Newman's blog).  And municipal court judge Ursula Hall has, via email, recently announced her pursuit of the 165th Civil District Court, held by Republican and Greg Abbott appointee Debra Mayfield.  A website linked to her name advertises "cash advance, debt consolidation and more" at the Google, and Lisa Falkenberg of the Chron had this entertaining report about Hall's last bid for state district court in 2010.  And Stace has even more, including the two Democrats off to a fast start to fill Sylvester Turner's vacated HD 139 chair.

But as far as my desired candidates go... I'm looking at you.

I'd run for something myself if I wasn't half-deaf and concerned that a Christian terrorist might shoot me for being an atheist.  Really (scroll down just a bit from the top).  Even with my history of offensive blog postings that would serve as ready-made oppo research, I'd run for office... if I could only hear the questions posed to me at a candidate forum.

Hearing-impaired atheists need representation too, you know.  But since I can't run, why don't you.  Yes, you.

Run as a Democrat or run as a Green.  The Texas Green Party especially would welcome your candidacy.  (Just don't be a flake or disingenuous about it.)  The fact is that sensible, sane liberals and progressives need to run for office in order to show the multitudes of non-voters that common men and women both lack and deserve a voice in the halls of political authority.  It would be great if you actually won, of course, and 2016 is a Texas Democrat's best quadrennial chance, but running as a Green sends the proper signals to an otherwise inept state party apparatus that working-class folks need a better partner than Texas Democrats have demonstrated for the past twenty years.  If you're going to lose anyway, you might as well lose with your progressive principles intact, and not sold out to a duopolist, center-left, corporate/militarist money-grubbing establishment party.

Hell, if two-time loser James Cargas wants to get his ass whipped by John Culberson a third time, why can't someone with honor, distinction, and integrity do so?  Like you, for example.

We have enough wealthy attorneys, business owners, and professionals holding political office and seeking it.  The One Percent is already well-represented.  We need more women, more people of color, more LGBT and especially more non-rich people in Austin and Washington.

Sort of like climate change, if we don't take action fast about fixing things, we might just be too late.  So it's on us -- err, you -- to make the change we all want to see and need to have happen.

Don't just vote this year; make a bid.  Stand for election somewhere, anywhere.  You literally have nothing to lose and potentially everything for all of us to gain.  The floor is fairly high, and the ceiling is... well, let's say, the roof is open to the sky.  Why don't you go for it?

Take a couple of weeks and decide.  The world is your oyster -- a somewhat bacteria-endangered oyster to be sure, but still yours for the taking.