Metro bonds: when no means yes

Boy, I hate to pass along a rape play-on-words today. Consider the following as it is intended, explaining the Harris County referendum on Metro's bond issue, and completely disconnected from that Mourdock stupidity.

When you go to the polls, you’ll vote on a ballot item that allows “the continued dedication of up to 25% of METRO’s sales and use tax revenues for street improvements and related projects” through December 31, 2025.

If you don’t know the facts, you’ll probably vote “for,” since – statistically – you’re with the majority of Houstonians in wanting more and better public transit options (as indicated in Rice University’s 2012 Kinder Houston Area Survey). You’ll walk out of your polling place feeling good about voting for a sustainable Houston.

And, without knowing it, you’ll have just voted to effectively shut down light rail and bus expansion until 2025.

Yeah, I voted 'for' but that's because I wasn't paying attention. Don't make my mistake.

I'm still good with a 'yes' vote on the rest of the propositions.

Republicans are worried about voter suppression.

Yes, you read that right.

Conservative blogs and news media are all buzzing about a team of international election monitors coming to observe the presidential elections in November. The observers are arriving at the invitation of the State Department and the behest of a number of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, ACLU, and others.

The latter groups’ call for an international team to keep an eye on the U.S. elections focuses particularly on states that have enacted strict voter I.D. laws and other curtailing of voting rights. An NAACP delegation visited the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland in September to bring attention to the issue. The NAACP’s move, and the idea of foreign presence in the U.S. to observe elections, has infuriated many on the right.

Such as Greg Abbott.

(Abbott) sent a sharply worded letter to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a group affiliated with the U.N. that plans to monitor Texas' elections on Nov. 6.

Abbott's message to the group, which has been dubbed the world's biggest election monitoring organization: Come at your own risk.

"The Texas Election Code governs anyone who participates in Texas elections — including representatives of the OSCE," Abbott wrote. "The OSCE’s representatives are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place. It may be a criminal offense for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance. Failure to comply with these requirements could subject the OSCE’s representatives to criminal prosecution for violating state law."

Let's go to Catherine Engelbrecht, of True the Vote (sic) and her interview on Fox News.

Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote appeared on Fox News on Monday claiming that the monitors’ presence was actually intended to prevent and discourage U.S. voters from exercising their rights. Fox’s Megyn Kelly readily agreed, stressing the left-leaning nature of the civil rights groups, seemingly unaware of the State Department’s role in inviting the monitors. It’s worth mentioning that True the Vote, itself a Tea Party group voter suppression effort, is currently under investigation for possible criminal conspiracy.

The most effective conservative meme feeds into a handful of paranoid conspiracies at once, and this one fits the bill. (Did you notice how quickly the United Nations connection was seized upon?)

As commenter Laura Miller notes...

The GOP is so vociferously concerned about voter fraud, you'd think they'd welcome outside observers to make sure there are no problems.

What are they so afraid of?

Why, that would be losing a fair election, of course. Or getting caught trying to steal one again, like they did in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. Or that "American exceptionalism" might not be all it's purported, with all of the voter fraud committed by Republicans that's been coming to light lately.

If you're not doing anything wrong, Republicans, you don't have anything to worry about.

On the other hand...

I certainly hope the election observers will be wearing body armor, because the Texas Taliban are capable of showing up armed and deranged when their fear and xenophobia are stoked like this.

Updates: Neil with more, and the international monitors respond to Abbott's bluster.

Ambassador Janez Lenarčič, director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), responded in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying that Abbott's threat put the state of Texas at odds with an agreement between the body and state authorities.

“The threat of criminal sanctions against OSCE/ODIHR observers is unacceptable,” Lenarčič said. “The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections.”

Lenarčič took issue with insinuations that officials in the group would meddle with elections, reiterating that they were bound by national laws and regulations, as well as their own strict code of conduct.

“Our observers are required to remain strictly impartial and not to intervene in the voting process in any way,” Lenarčič said. “They are in the United States to observe these elections, not to interfere in them.”

Let's separate and add some emphasis to this last sentence.

A release relaying Lenarčič's comments pointed out that the OSCE has observed five previous U.S. elections since 2002, all without incident.

Obama 290, Romney 235 and another debate tonight

With Colorado and New Hampshire uncalled. That's my prognostication today. Try your hand there. Ohio is the linchpin for both campaigns, as Nate Silver elaborates.

I have thought for some time now -- weeks at least, months maybe -- that North Carolina and Florida would go to Romney (with as much anecdotal evidence from people I know in both states as empirical). Likewise, I don't think that either Pennsylvania or Nevada or Wisconsin are in as much play as some people believe. I give Virginia to Obama on the strength of Virgil Goode and Gary Johnson. NH and CO are legitimate tossups, and Obama has a small lead in the Buckeye State. All eyes there, right through to November 6.

Update: One of my old favorites, Electoral-Vote.com, has it 303-235 without Rasmussen, and the Senate 54 D - 45 R with one tie (which is actually independent Angus King in Maine).

If there is actually anyone who is genuinely undecided -- and not just an undecided Republican -- then there's another debate to watch this evening.



The 'RSVP online' is only there in order for organizers to plan server load (in other words, it is not required that you reserve online to watch). If you have cable or satellite you can watch the debate on C-SPAN, Link TV(Direct TV channel 375, Dish Network channel 9410), and other outlets.

#horsesandbayonets

Who knew that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney could be so agreeable?

With the race as tight as ever, and in light of last week’s spirited and heated debate between Obama and Romney, all eyes were on Boca Raton, Fla., on Monday night as the presidential candidates squared off for the third and final time before the election. 

It wasn't long before Obama sunk Romney's battleship, however.

But perhaps the best exchange of the night was when Romney discussed increasing the military, repeating a claim that the U.S. Navy is the smallest it’s been since 1917.

“I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works,” Obama’s responded. “You mentioned our Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we had in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have ships that go underwater.” He added, “The question is not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships.”

I don't think the debate was even close, but apparently it won't matter.

On the substance, Obama won the debate. "Governor Romney reminds me of Pinocchio," Obama foreign-policy adviser Richard Danzig, a former Navy secretary, told me afterward. "He wants to be a real boy. He wants to talk strategy. But I don't think Governor Romney really lives in the 21st Century." (Danzig also rolled his eyes at the GOP's contention that Obama had dissed the Navy. Modern naval carriers, he said, are the equivalent of numerous turn-of-the-20th-century ships.)

But Romney's team was just as convinced that the Republican prevailed on style. "The only importance this debate had is it permits people to envision Governor Romney as commander in chief. That was his test," Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said. "The president showed up not defending America's position in the world but defending his deteriorated position in the race. I think President Obama came across as someone falling behind in the race."

The debates are over. There are two weeks until Election Day. More than anything, the last debate revealed where the candidates think they stand: Romney confident, convinced he has only to maintain his momentum to keep floating to the top of the polls; Obama fighting like an underdog to stop Romney's rise and knock him off his pedestal. 

I do think that, with a few notable exceptions, the contest is now about who gets their supporters to the polls. To that end, at Houston's third or fourth-most popular (predominantly D) polling place yesterday afternoon -- Fiesta on Kirby at OST -- I waited on queue about an hour to vote. The line moved steadily so the time passed quickly. That was about 15 minutes longer than I waited four years ago at the same location (but I went later in the first week of EV). Update: Archives reveal this post projecting 500,000 total early voters in 2008, and there were actually 730,000 (via Charles). Note there also that turnout on Election Day proper was soft, bringing the total in short of the initial goal of 1.2 million Harris County voters. (There were some recriminations about Obama's campaign posted here with respect to that.)

We'll see how those numbers compare in a couple of weeks. But we all remember how 2008 turned out, right?

Update II: From an e-mail delivered this morning, and in the Chron this afternoon...

(County Clerk) Stan Stanart announced today that Harris County voters set a new record for voting during the first day of Early Voting in person. 47,093 persons voted on Monday, shattering the November 2008 first day total of 39,201. 

Update III: And 51,578 voted today.

Related reading:

Hawks of a Feather Flock Together

Fact check: Romney flubs Middle East geography while Obama gets foe's record as Massachusetts governor wrong

Romney shows he's no expert on foreign policy, but seems to avoid getting knocked out by Obama

And Joe Klein...

I was flipping around the channels, watching the talking heads afterward and saw Chris Wallace — an estimable journalist, in most cases — do something really Fox News reprehensible. He mentioned that a Marine had tweeted that Obama wasn’t in touch because Marines still use bayonets. True enough, but does Wallace really think that bayonets are nearly as important as they were 100 years ago? They certainly haven’t been in my experience in war zones over the past 30 years.

And meanwhile, Romney made the sort of mistake that makes Marines cringe: early on in the debate, he called our troops overseas “soldiers.” That drives Marines up a wall. The Army consists of soldiers. The Marine Corps consists of Marines. Both exist under the umbrella of American troops or forces serving overseas. This distinction has been so noxious to the Army that in recent years, it has capitalized its troops — Soldiers — to match the Marine code. I would guess that Fox News may have gotten a few e-mails about that, unmentioned by Fox.

This may seem petty, but it is part of the other-than-reality-based world of RushFoxland — like the alleged Apology Tour that wasn’t. That world, so far as foreign policy is concerned, came crashing down tonight.

The Early Vote Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance reminds everyone that early voting is now under way as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff has one more poll of Texas to discuss.  

BossKitty at TruthHugger has mixed feelings about the extravaganza of F1 Circuit of the Americas and what it's doing to the sleepy little community of Elroy and Cedar Creek -- which will see little benefit for many years -- in The Road to Elroy for F1 Wheeler Dealers. And why do corporations decide what news Americans need to hear and see? Why was such a significant news story first discovered on al-Jazeera: Foreign News and HuffPo Get What American News Media Misses. And after watching the talking heads, gotta share this: Hey ya’ll, we are NOT electing a President.

This week WCNews at Eye on Williamson posted about the "Wal-Mart-ization" of transportation in Texas: Profit, greed and ideology.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is just disgusted with Greg Abbott and his Republican cronies pandering to the people who want to force their religion on every American.

The passing of Sen. Mario Gallegos will set off a scramble to lay claim as his successor in the Texas Senate, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Neil at Texas Liberal offered up a list of Green Party candidates on the ballot in Texas in 2012. It is at least worth a look to give Greens a thought as Texas Democrats offer another lackluster effort in 2012, and as our political system increasingly seems unable to deal with the most important questions of long-term job creation and climate change.

Libby Shaw writes about Rick Perry's latest mission: promoting Romney in Colorado. That should turn out real well for him. Check out Rick Perry To Go to Colorado to Promote Mitt Romney at TexasKaos.

Remaining Brainy Endorsements, Part II (Harris County and statehouse)

(See Part I for the federal and statewide endorsements.)

Texas State Board of Education

I previously endorsed G.C. Molison in District 6, where I reside, but residents of Districts 4 and 8 should cast their ballots for Democrats Lawrence Allen and Dexter Smith, respectively.

State Senator

Similarly, David Courtney in my home district of SD-17 has a Libertarian opponent and a Republican incumbent, so if Democrats can see their way past an STD ballot then he will reward them with effective leadership in the Senate. Other state Senate candidates worthy of your vote include...

SD-06: The late Mario Gallegos. If he defeats his GOP challenger as expected, there will be a special election called by the governor to replace him.

SD-7: Sam Fayed (Tejas) Texas. A ham sandwich would be better than Dan Patrick. Tejas/Texas is all but a rotten ham sandwich. Charles Kuffner doesn't think he's worth it; I'll let you decide.

SD-11: Jackie Acquistapace (D). Conservative, Christian, fairly poor with the English language, and still better than Larry Taylor.

SD-13: Rodney Ellis (D). Still the liberal stalwart of the Texas Senate.

SD-15: John Whitmire (D). He drew a Republican opponent, and he could be better on progressive issues, but Whitmire can continue to be the Dean as long as he likes.

Texas House of Representatives

State Representative, District 127: Cody Pogue (D). Pogue is challenging "Rookie of the Year" Dan Huberty in this Humble/Kingwood-area district. Egberto Willies has written extensively about Pogue's campaign.

District 130: Art Browning (G). Browning is challenging Republican incumbent Allen Fletcher in this northwest Harris County district. Fletcher, whose brushes with illegality are mounting, is bound to collapse of his moral turpitude sooner rather than later; he needs to be removed from the Texas House before that happens.

Browning, a semi-retired petroleum geologist, ran for Texas Railroad Commission in 2010.

District 131: Alfred Molison (G). One of the first Brainy Endorsements.

District 134: Ann Johnson (D). Also an early Brainy Endorsement.

District 135: Paul Morgan (D). A retired printer, Morgan is challenging Republican incumbent Gary Elkins in this Jersey Village -area district. Elkins couldn't even be bothered to fill out the Vote 411 questionnaire. He was described as "used furniture" by Texas Monthly...  in 2003. Isn't it about time we throw that ratty old chair out?

District 137: Gene Wu (D). Wu won a challenging primary and deserves to be the able replacement for the indomitable Scott Hochberg. A legacy Wu can live up to, I believe.

District 139: Sylvester Turner (D). Turner is one of the most capable legislators in the Harris County delegation.

Districts 140, 141, 142, 143: Armando Walle, Senfronia Thompson, Harold Dutton and Ana Hernandez-Luna (all Ds). All four are experienced and capable, face token November opposition if any at all, and have been mentioned as successors to the SD-6 Texas Senate seat after the passing of Mario Gallegos.

District 144: To replace the deceased Republican incumbent, Ken Legler (who had opted not to run for re-election prior to his demise), the Democrats picked Mary Ann Perez, and seek to flip this purple Pasadena-area district. Just a few years ago it was represented by Crazy Bob Talton, so it's evident that the Latino Democratic wave is actually coming in a few places. Perez is running against a Republatino and a Libertarian. Chances are good.

District 145: Carol Alvarado. See D-140-143 above. Texas Monthly wrote about her feisty battle over the sonogram bill in the last session. Her detailed description of the procedure involving transvaginal wanding (pictured at left) had the House transfixed. BOR had more (NSFW). Alvarado is a real fighter, and whether she serves in the Texas House or the Senate in the next legislative session, she will be formidable.

District 146: Borris Miles (D). My representative has regained his footing after some rocky episodes in years past that involved personal troubles. He's a rock-solid progressive.

District 147: Garnet Coleman (D) or Deb Shafto (G). This is mostly a keep-him-honest referendum on Coleman. If you don't think he's done a good enough job, then vote for Shafto, the Green Party's gubernatorial candidate in 2010, and before that, a competitor for Houston city council in 2009.

District 148: Henry Cooper (G) over Jessica Farrar (D) as previously detailed in this Brainy Endorsement from August.

District 149: Hubert Vo (D). Was it only a few years ago that this district was represented by the vile Talmadge Heflin?

District 150: Brad Neal (D). Neal once again picks up the gauntlet against Debbie "Pit of Hell", "Go Live in Afghanistan" Riddle. Maybe some day they'll get tired of her nasty, sorry ass and vote her out. Maybe this November 6.

Justice, First Court of Appeals

Places 2, 6, 7, 8, and 9: Ron Lovett, Chuck Silverman, Natalia Cokinos Oakes, Nile Copeland, and Kathy Cheng (all D).

Copeland was, of course, the very first Brainy Endorsement of this election cycle. Cheng is Copeland's law partner. They have both worked tirelessly, registering new voters at citizenship swearings-in and walking blocks to introduce themselves. I have known Cokinos Oakes' family since I was a child growing up in Beaumont. Silverman barely lost a district court race in 2010 2008; here's the Q&A with his challenger from vote411.

Justice, Fourteenth Court of Appeals

Places 3, 4, 5, and 8: Barbara Gardner, Jim Wrotenberry, Tanner Garth, and Julia Maldonado (all D).

You've seen Gardner's Brainy Endorsement, I take it? She's the best. Maldonado likewise. Wrotenberry and Garth are making bids again for judicial office after narrow losses in 2008 and 2010.

Harris County Judicial Courts

Recommended candidates include: Mike Miller (11th), Al Bennett (61st), Larry Weiman (80th), Kyle Carter (125th), R.K. Sandhill (127th), Michael Gomez (129th), Jaclanel McFarland (133rd), Mike Engelhart (151st), Robert Schaffer (152nd), Alexandra Smoots-Hogan (164th), Josefina Rendon (165th), Ruben Guerrero (174th), Shawna Reagin (176th), Vivian King (177th), David Mendoza (178th), Randy Roll (179th), Tracy Good (333rd), Donna Roth (334th), Herb Ritchie (337th), Hazel Jones (338th), Maria Jackson (339th), and Mack McGinnis (351st).

Please note that some races are left out. That's for good reason.

Harris County District Attorney: No Endorsement.

Lloyd Oliver is both party pariah and Tea Party Democrat. After reading that article, I cannot in good conscience recommend a vote for him. I'm leaving this race blank.

Harris County Attorney (Vince Ryan-D) and Harris County Sheriff (Remington Alessi-G).  Both are previous Brainy Endorsements.

Harris County Tax Assessor/Collector: Ann Harris Bennett. Also an earlier Brainy Endorsement.

Harris County Court at Law #1: Erica Graham, and #2: Damon Crenshaw.

Harris County School Trustee

Position 3, At Large: Diane Trautman
Pos. 4, Pct. 3: Silvia Mintz
Pos. 6, Pct, 1: Erica Lee

Harris County Commissioner

Precinct 1: El Franco Lee
Precinct 3: Glorice McPherson
Precinct 4: Sean Hammerle

Justices of the Peace

Precinct 1, Place 1: Dale Gorczynski
Pct. 2, Pl. 1: JoAnn Delgado
Pct. 3, Pl. 1: Mike Parrot
Pct. 6, Pl 1: Richard Vara
Pct. 8, Pl. 1: Tommy Ginn

And finally...

Harris County Constable, Precinct 1

Carlos Villalobos (G)





Precinct 2: Chris Diaz (D)
Precinct 3: Ken Jones (D)

And don't forget to vote for ALL the bond issues.