McClellan or McKiernan?

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?

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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

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?

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?

Congress: No Bailout Without Oversight

Well it didn’t work, did it? Amid frantic screams for fast action before financial disaster hits, the fear that is so much a hallmark of the Republican psyche failed to spread beyond the usual suspects. Not only did congress NOT pass any bailout bill today, they came back to Treasury Secretary Paulson with a collective “what the #%&@*! is this?”

As pointed out by POGO (Project on Government Oversight) two troublesome sections in the bill proposed by the treasury are heinous in their very essence in that they bring to mind the very thing, too many secrets, that got us into this fix in the first place.

Section 2 grants the Secretary the authority to enter into contracts "without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts”

Section 8 would make the Secretary's decisions non-reviewable "by any court of law or any administrative agency."

The Treasury Secretary, in short, was setting himself up as someone with absolute power in this crisis. I’m sorry that’s a little too much to take. The former CEO of Goldman-Sachs is essentially placed in charge of the distribution of vast sums of money to his friends with absolutely no oversight, leaving those wronged in this with no recourse in courts.

I think Vladimir Putin would just love to have this kind of authority.

Congress is coming back with all sorts of remedies, bankers may have to forfeit those bonuses they got selling mortgages to unqualified borrowers, and Paulson is seeing one privilege after another being stripped out of the bill.

I think the bailout is inevitable. Wall Street sold Main Street down the river and now we taxpayers have to pony up or face greater devastation. I’m just glad that cooler minds won the day, on a day when the DOW fell 372 points when traders saw their Christmas bonuses go up in flames.

Rick Noriega Responds to Cornyn’s TV Ad: All By Myself

When I viewed John Cornyn’s ad, various scenes of him walking around alone in Palo Duro Canyon, I just shook my head and thought “how lame. What’s the point of this?” Well, from the Noriega campaign response ad, I can see that I need to learn a few things.

Lesson 1: Never show yourself in absolute solitude, even if that is your usual state. It opens you up to all kinds of mirth and merriment.

Lesson 2: Never try and pass off yourself as a “change candidate” when your voting record goes 95% along with Bush. That’s not change, that is status quo.

Lesson 3: Dress well. Where are the hat and the jacket with the fringe on the sleeves? We look a little frail and pasty without that hat and that fringe.

Here is the ad, short and to the point.

Paulson Urges Congress to Move Quickly in Mortgage Bailout

Now we find that the “somewhere between $500 billion and $1trillion” is going to be about $700 billion, we also find that congress must grant this bailout quickly.

Like tomorrow.

Before the stock market opens.

Man, talk about high pressure sales tactics.

Treasury Secretary Henry “King Henry” Paulsen visited four Sunday news programs and on one or more of them, had this to say about timing, and about the sudden urgency:

“I'm not sure what we could have done sooner. [It's been a] once-in-a-50-year kind of a situation here. And there is no way that we could have gone to Congress and got the authority to inject capital into the banking system by buying illiquid assets unless there was the clear and urgent and obvious need.”

I think that last bit is most telling. It is the modus operandi of the Bush Regime to come up with ways for the government to spend huge amounts of taxpayer money on urgently needed matters. And the government must do it quickly so they don’t have a chance to sit down and examine this thing a little better.

And for God’s sake, don’t try and fix what is broken, just deliver the long green and fast.

And let’s not be pointing fingers here. Let’s not worry about how many corporate executives are going to take their leave with millions of bailout dollars.

After all, they’re taking mere millions, We’re talking $700 BILLION.

I don’t know about you, but this stuff just sounds to me like the last chapter of the book entitled “The Fleecing of America – How Bush Got Lucre for His Buddies.”

A Saturday Afternoon at the Headquarters

It’s still a little early for the Fort Bend Democrats headquarters to become a beehive of activity, but today it seemed like it was anyway.

It seems that if you put out a tent or a canopy, people stop and get out to look at what’s under it. That’s exactly what happened.

People streamed in and out all day buying signs, T-shirts, caps and buttons.

Then there was data entry going on. The Texas Democratic Party’s Voter Activation Network received updates on voters all day from volunteers who came in and out all day.

We have a wide variety of buttons that we buy from an online store and sell at a small markup so we can buy more.

We have the usual ticket buttons,

but also we have specialty items like these.

I am a special fan of the "Bloggers for" button. Especially when I have to explain to someone what OMGSTFU stands for.

A South Texas VA Hospital? Cornyn Can’t Deliver the Goods.

Working fast and furious, our two Republican senators got some tax extensions included in a tax bill, and got some hurricane relief funds included in it as well. But when it came down to the wire, the much-promised funding for a VA hospital to serve the Rio Grande Valley somehow did not make the cut.

So South Texas veterans will have to continue to receive health care from VA hospitals that are up to a 6 hour drive away.

According to Cornyn, who is very quick to lay blame at others’ feet, the bill was not included as an amendment to a defense funding bill because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and bill manager Carl Levin refused to include it.

John Cornyn has only himself to blame for this one.

Cornyn’s problem?

John Cornyn.

As the second to lowest ranked senator in the US Senate in terms of effectiveness, Cornyn is a liability for his constituents and the Senate leadership knows it. John Cornyn is up for re-election this year against a formidable opponent, Lt Col Rick Noriega. Senate leadership sees an opportunity to exchange a lemon for a plum, and declined to give the junior senator a piece of pork to deliver to his state.

The message to Texans is clear. Clean up your act and send a Democrat to the US Senate. If Texans want to get these things funded, they need to rethink this whole “elect-a-Republican-at-any-price” thing.

So South Texas veterans who are being told by John Cornyn to “keep up the pressure on Congress by making phone calls, sending e-mail and letters, and holding meetings” maybe ought to reconsider working on this with Cornyn. As we all found out this week, Cornyn can’t deliver the goods because Cornyn is Cornyn.

Rather than gnash your teeth at Cronyn’s failure, better to send a Democrat to the US Senate. A Democrat will be able to get this done.

A Democrat like Rick Noriega.

Ike Sucks

Actually, you know . . . technically . . . Ike blows. But I am adopting the terminology found in a new blog I discovered the other day: Anything But Nice. I ran across it the other day when I was checking out the newest links to this web page. I was actually dumbstruck to see that the blogger, Colleen, has a link to this web page associated with the words “Texas & Politics.”

OK, well I suppose if Pete Olson can call me a “prominent local Democrat blogger,” Colleen can do what she wants. I can, too. Notice I have a link to her blog in my “Faves” blogroll now.

But I digress.

Ike really sucks. I came out of the storm relatively unscathed compared to others. My backyard fence blew down and that was no surprise, it was 15 years old and coming apart anyway. I lost power at 8:30 but it was restored a mere 22 hours later. TV and internet were out for 5 days and it was fun to see the neighborhood kids outside playing and families going for walks.

It brought back memories of my childhood.

But during my childhood, the wind didn’t knock over fences, trees, houses and trailers. The rain fell vertically.

Sometimes the ground moved up and down and side to side but that’s life on the faultline. People here tell me that they’d take a hurricane over an earthquake any day.

I beg to differ.

You see, when there’s an earthquake there is no warning. There is no one on the news with “cones of uncertainty” showing where the earthquake is likely to hit.

For five straight days.

And in most earthquakes the devastation is localized to the epicenter and maybe a few square miles around it. A hurricane is an earthquake with legs.

An earthquake will knock things over. A hurricane will wipe things off the map.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at two photographs that inspired this piece. The first photo is the “before” shot of a part of the Bolivar Peninsula.

This next photo is the “after” shot of just about the exact same area.

Some of those houses simply aren’t there anymore. There isn’t even any debris, just bare earth.

I don’t know for sure, but I assume that the Bolivar Peninsula was named in honor of the South American Revolutionary Simόn Bolívar. Bolivar is one of those place names that Texans love to mispronounce. Where I grew up Bolivar was pronounced bo-LEE-var, with a stress on the second syllable. Here in Texas it’s pronounced BAWL-eh-ver.

But I suppose there is some good to the place name mispronunciations that you run across all the time here.

Like how Texans pronounce the name “Fuqua” as opposed to how Californians would.

Californians would never name a place “Fuqua.”

Where is the Conservative Outcry on the Mortgage Bailout?

We almost saw it Monday when John McCain came out condemning Bush’s $85 billion plan to bail out AIG, the American International Group. Then someone nudged him in the ribs and pointed out that AIG insured other banks and institutions that held peoples’ retirement packages and that their collapse would set off a domino effect. Then he changed his tune and said he was opposed to the notion but not the action.

This bailout, and the more extensive one proposed this morning by Bush really has to grate on the nerves of laissez-faire capitalist conservatives who believe in a free market, that the strong survive and the market self-corrects.

Taxpayer money, and I mean lots of it, all going toward a bailout of the mortgage industry.

And all because of the economic policies promulgated by Phil Gramm and his ilk. Policies that resulted deregulation of the lending industry. Policies that led to deregulation of the energy speculation market.

Policies that not only took the shotgun out of the farmer’s hand, but also put the wolf in charge of the henhouse.

Good old conservative laissez-faire free market policies.

But wait, there’s more.

Announced today is the SEC policy that forbids selling short the stocks of 799 financial institutions. Selling stocks short is seen by some to be a valid way to make money on the misfortunes of others because this is the way the free market prevents stocks from becoming over valued. But for the next couple of weeks anyway, the SEC is telling stock traders that they can’t make money that way.

The government stepping in telling traders that they can make money one way but not another.

Oh, that has got to rankle the free marketers.

So how are we going to fix the economy? The economy that was wrecked by 8 years of rule by a crew of kleptomaniacs? Well it’s simple really. All Bush has to do is ask what Democrats would do. Ask what liberal Democrats would do. And then do what they say.

So he did.

And the stock market responded by rising over 400 points in the first 3 hours of trading.

And the free market laissez-faire conservatives who would normally scream and shout about a socialist solution have to sit down and stay quiet while they count their money.

The New Obama/Biden Yard Signs Are In!

While I was at the Fort Bend Democrats Rosenberg headquarters today a truck rolled up filled with 5000 of the new Obama/Biden signs.

To get them off the semi as quickly as possible we backed up a pickup and offloaded to the truck bed. Then drove the truck up to the headquarters entrance. I took a couple of photos of the event as we finished the making the pile

Here we are taking a break after building the pile o’ signs in the truck bed.

And here is Wanda, the Fort Bend Democrats’ secret weapon, a talented artist, modeling one of the signs next to the pile.

There’s a funny story associated with this. Don swears it’s true.

Recall that Barack Obama announced his running mate on the Saturday before the Democratic National Convention convened the following Monday? On the very next day, Sunday, an Obama supporter stopped in to buy some campaign paraphernalia, and she asked whether we had any Obama/Biden signs. Don laughed and told her “We’re good but not that good.”

So anyway, the new signs are in at 4801 Avenue H in Rosenberg [map]. You can buy them for $3.00 each or 2 for $5.00 (any two). The older signs with Obama’s name alone are now selling for $2.00 each. Stakes are included.

These things are going to go fast, and to my knowledge there is no other source for these slick suckers in Fort Bend County. Come and get yours now. The faster they go, the faster we can turn around and buy more.

Nick Lampson Opens Mobile Office for Hurricane Victims

When my congressman, Congressman Nick Lampson votes in congress, he sometimes votes with the party of the Dark Side, and when he does that you hear about it from me. But everyone has always praised Nick Lampson for his excellent constituent services record, and this time I think I need to give credit where credit is due: Nick Lampson is doing a stellar job for hurricane Ike’s victims.

It’s in The Chron today, and I also received a message from Boyd Richie, Chairman of the Texas Democratic Party extolling the efforts of Nick Lampson and his district staff.

Lampson, whose congressional district boundaries encompass the I-45 corridor – the freeway that Hurricane Ike took – secured the mobile communications unit owned by the House of Representatives that includes 225 Wi-Fi capable laptop PCs and 225 cell phones, and a satellite uplink truck. The unit is parked outside the American Legion Hall at 11702 Galveston Rd, Houston, TX across the street from Ellington Field. Between the hours of 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM hurricane victims can come in and use the system to apply for FEMA housing assistance. FEMA will pay for a one month hotel stay for families whose homes are uninhabitable, but they have to apply.

Nick Lampson is providing the means for them to do this.

Now the occurrence of disasters during an election season ironically seems to favor incumbent candidates. There are a couple of theories why this is so. First challenger activities are curtailed after a disaster hits – their efforts seem inappropriate. And second, incumbents are seen working the problem and helping the community with all of the government resources at their disposal. For the most part, incumbents here in Red Texas are Republicans. But Nick Lampson, a Democrat, is clearly an exception.

And luckily, he seems to know how to deliver the goods when disaster strikes.