By 3:30 pm my precinct had

... only 298 votes cast, but there's been close to that number since. We're voting this year at the Holiday Inn at Reliant.

I'm not worried about turnout; it seems like a presidential year, judging from my vantage point outside the hotel pushing cards. And in 2004 my precinct went 79% for John Kerry.

I just hope I squeezed all of the juice out of it this time.

Not you, Elam

I have some extra invitations, but none with your name on them. You're an "outside" dog, anyway:

You are invited to spend the evening of November 7, 2006
with David and Rachel Van Os
in their suite at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel
Austin, Texas

After David wins the election,
we will all march to the Capitol
where he will make his acceptance speech
and take back Texas for the People.

Sounds elitist, doesn't it Chris? It won't be (except for excluding people like you).

Cheer up though, little buddy. I won't make it either. I'm working my precinct all day.

Hey, why don't you crash it? I'll bet you've never had your ass kicked by a couple of pipefitters...

Top Ten Reasons to Vote Republican

... but only if you're an idiot, of course:

10. Vote Republican if you think it's a good idea to post detailed nuclear bomb-making instructions -- in Arabic -- on the Internet.

9. Vote Republican if you want to stay the course in Iraq.

8. Vote Republican if you think the President should get advice on gay-bashing from a fundamentalist pastor who secretly bangs gay prostitutes.

7. Vote Republican if you think the best way to deal with a child predator is to cover your own ass.

6. Vote Republican if you hate the military.

5. Vote Republican if you like people who will literally say anything to get elected.

4. Vote Republican if you think the best way to answer a tough question is to have your questioner beaten up.

3. Vote Republican if you think laws are for other people -- particularly brown, Democratic people.

2. Vote Republican if you think it's cool for Congressmen to pay their mistresses to keep quiet until after Election Day.

and 1. Vote Republican if you think this bunch is NOT the most corrupt, hypocritical, worthless bunch of asshats you have ever seen in your life.

In the past six years Republicans have had total control of the US and state government. They have held onto that power by literally terrorizing their constituents, fooling them into believing that if the GOP isn't running the show then Uncle Sam will be blown up by terrorists, buggered by a homosexual and lose his job to a Mexican.

The politics of fear have allowed Republicans in Washington and Austin to wipe themselves with the Constitution, redistrict themselves into semi-permanent majorities, take away rights that human beings have relied on for centuries, devastate our children's healthcare and education, abandon their responsibility to check the power of the presidency, enrich themselves and their corporate clients while assaulting the middle class, and ruin the lives of countless thousands of people from Baghdad to New Orleans and East Texas. They've done all this by following a strict doctrine of "divide and conquer," turning American against American and Texan against Texan while their cronies sit back, laugh, and rake in the cash.

If you have friends, family, neighbors, or co-workers who are as disgusted by the modern Republican party as I am, make sure you get them to the polls on the day after tomorrow. The GOP has spent the last six years telling us what cannot be done. There remains a long road ahead, but many Democratic victories on Tuesday can be the first step toward repairing the damage these idiots have done, and making the USA -- and Texas -- great again.

God's Own Party: Screw the poor

During the early voting period just completed, the city of Houston offered free flu shots to people at selected locations. This was challenged by the Harris County Republican Party, which claimed through their chairman Jared Woodfill that it was a "scheme" to get Democrats to the polls. Mayor Bill White promptly ceased the program.

One of our vile local conservative blogs -- this is the only hint I'm giving -- quoted Jesus out of context from Matthew 26:11: "the poor be with ye always".

This rankles me on several levels:

1. I could simply note that the Harris County branch of US Hezbollah, also known as the Republican Party, is as sorry as Satan regarding this matter and leave it at that, but I won't.

2. Bill White is a bigger coward than John Kerry for rolling over on this. I hereby declare my support for whomever happens to be White's Democratic primary opponent when he runs for higher office.

3. The biblical quotation is not only out of context but incomplete as well. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the Holy Scriptures -- that barely describes me, incidentally -- can easily figure out that Jesus wasn't contradicting his many statements about the poor being blessed, the meek inheriting the Earth, that people should not covet earthly possessions and in fact should sell them, that the moneychangers were sinful, that the wealthy have almost no chance of entering heaven, and so on. Michael Dawson does a much better job of dissembling this atrocious rationale.

As previously noted many times in this space: I don't go to church, I hardly even believe in a higher authority, but I sure know an Elmer Gantry when I hear him.

What the Harris County Republican Party managed to pull off this week is absolutely NOT what Jesus would have done. But that won't stop them from wallowing happily in the stench of their hypocrisy like pigs in shit.

Support the Troops: Vote Democratic

-- "Donald Rumsfeld must go". That's the subject of an editorial which will appear in Monday's Army Times, Air Force Times, Marine Corps Times, and Navy Times, the military service's newspapers of record.

I'm careful wishing for this: he will likely be replaced by Joe Lieberman, who will resign the Senate seat he is probably going to be re-elected to, which means that the Republican governor of Connecticut will appoint a Republican to replace him. Then again, what really is the difference between Lieberman and any another shit-eating conservative?

-- November is off to a bloody start in Iraq. And I do mean bloody.

Republicans are chanting "taxes, taxes, John Kerry, taxes, what's their plan, taxes, taxes, taxes", but the truth about what issue Tuesday's vote turns on is flowing down that Baghdad street.

-- Tammy Duckworth, the Democratic candidate for Illinois' 6th congressional district who lost both legs in Iraq when her helicopter was shot down, was passed over for endorsement by the VFW. They instead picked the Republican who has had no military service. Why? Because a member of the national board lives in the district. He's a right-wing freak, of course.

The VFW overlooked sending a questionnaire to Duckworth -- as they typically do all candidates considered for endorsement -- and relied solely on the word of Ray Soden, said freak.

This is, as you might be guessing, backfiring on both the VFW and the Republican.

-- In this Vanity Fair interview with Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum and others, author David Rose reveals that even the hearts of neoconservative darkness have turned against the Bushies for their failures in Iraq.

Who's had enough?