Locke's "black/brown coalition" turns red

Gene Locke, the African-American faux Democrat in the Houston mayoral tilt -- to be distinguished from the Anglo faux Dem Peter Brown -- has the full and unqualified support of the Republican elections administrator in Harris County, Beverly Kaufman.

Muse:

This is the same Beverly Kaufman who is on record as being against the pre-clearance portion of the Voting Rights Act. Pre-clearance is in place for nine Southern states that have a history of discrimination or suppressing minority voting, including Texas. ... What am I missing? How does having Beverly Kaufman on your team not drive away Democrats, especially minorities?

Neil:

Mr. Locke assumes black voters in Houston will support him for Mayor because he is black—But black support may not be enough to reach a runoff. To get the extra votes he feels he needs, Mr. Locke will engage in low-down tactics

He’ll sell out his core supporters in a heartbeat.

Mr. Locke thinks black folks in Houston are stupid. He thinks he can trumpet the support of people who don’t at all share the beliefs of his most important voters, and that people won’t catch on that he is a fraud.

Locke and Brown remind me of a couple of aluminum siding salesmen working both sides of the street; one goes into the rube's living room thirty minutes after the other promising them a set of eight steak knives instead of six.

How many people are going to fall for their act? Probably enough to get one of these scam artists into the runoff.

Rick Perry paying volunteers to hack his Web stream

Oops. A little conflation of this week's top Governor MoFo headlines. First:

The Republican governor's re-election campaign is paying volunteers to sign up other volunteers, and it promises more cash for those turning out voters in the March primary. The campaign hopes for big dividends from the Amway-style program, known as Perry Home Headquarters.

It depends on what the definition of "volunteer" is. Second:

The Austin-American Statesman reports that the Perry campaign was hosting a live video Webcast, which crashed. "This planned and coordinated attack was political sabotage, and we are working to identify those responsible for this illegal activity," said campaign spokesman Mark Miner.

Phillip Martin dissects the logical fallacy, however, which leaves the Perry camp holding nothing except a yellowed page out of the Rove playbook.

And while the comments associated with the two links above are mandatory reading, let me please paraphrase the snarkiest remark I've read all week:

(Rick Perry) doesn't know whether to shit or go blind, so he's opted for both. It smells real bad, but at least he can't see it.