It’s That Easy

Everyone says H-Town is a football town. How come we have never played in the Super Bowl? We are one of four NFL cities to have never played in the Super Bowl. Us, Cleveland, Detroit and Jacksonville.  

The Astros have been to four World Series. The Rockets have been to four NBA Finals.  

In thirteen days, Super Bowl 56 will be played.  

H-Town is a football town. Got it? 

I forgot. H-Town has hosted three Super Bowls. The Patriots won two of them, the Dolphins the other, the Vikings, Panthers and Falcons lost them. 

I didn’t know solving local crime was that easy. I also didn’t know that if Harris County voters elect a GOP majority commissioners court in November, our local crime problem will be solved. That’s what I learned yesterday on “What’s Your Point.”  

The GOP panelists on the show yesterday morning said our crime problem in Harris County is the fault of Judge Lina Hidalgo and Commissioners Rodney Ellis and Adrian Garcia. All are Democrats. One of the panelists even called them the three stooges. They said we needed to vote out of office Judge Hidalgo and Commissioner Garcia in November. 

Let’s see now. When the GOP had control of the Commissioners Court for three decades prior to 2019, we didn’t have a crime problem in Harris County. I didn’t know that. Did you?  

Did you know that up until 1984, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) members were elected by the boundaries of congressional districts. At that time, Texas had 24 congressional districts and 24 members of the State Board of Education. SBOE members each represented a congressional district. The education reform bill, HB 72, that passed in a special called session in 1984 reduced the number of SBOE members and districts to the current 15. As I recall, and I was there, nobody really made a fuss of things. There were other fish to fry so to speak in the bill that at the time mattered more. Now you know. 

I admit it. I thought when the Bengals fell behind 21-3 in the second quarter that they were goners. 

Hall of Fame great Nolan Ryan is 75 today. Happy Birthday, Nolan! 

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Baytown Ain’t H-Town

I saw this headline in today’s online Chron and was curious.  

Exclusive: Walmart planning huge new distribution center in Houston as e-commerce competition intensifies 

Then I clicked on the story to read and here is what I found: 

Walmart is investing in a new distribution center in the southeast Houston area as e-commerce continues to light up the city’s industrial real estate market. 

Walmart is developing 1 million square feet of warehouse space in Baytown at 4633 Borusan Road at Cedar Port Trade Center, an distribution facility developed by Dallas-based Hunt Southwest, according to data from the commercial real estate information firm CoStar and two commercial real estate professionals familiar with the transaction. 

The Walmart distribution center will be in Baytown – the most eastern part of Baytown. Not H-Town. That location is about a 40-minute drive from H-Town.  

It will employ folks from Baytown, East Harris County and Chambers County. Here is the entire read: Exclusive: Walmart planning huge new distribution center in Houston (houstonchronicle.com). 

I saw this tweet from my council member yesterday: 

Abbie Kamin 

@AbbieKamin 

Big joint committee today on dangers our residents are facing with @UnionPacific continuing to neglect safety of Houstonians and neighborhoods. 

Commentary has learned to live with trains, planes and automobiles in H-Town. I learn the routes and stuff like that. If CM Kamin really wants to do something, she can lead the effort to take the locomotive off of the City of H-Town logo. Now that is doable. A symbolic gesture of sorts. 

Commentary has said it before. I blame many in the GOP for the pandemic mess we are still in. The latest is Sarah Palin testing positive and still going out in public in New York City to grab a bite. That is your GOP and COVID-19. They are dangerous people. Do not even bother to try to defend her actions.

I saw a tweet yesterday that prompts me to say this. If you are a Democratic incumbent office holder and drew an opponent in the primary, you must campaign. Period. I do not care if you have served one term or twenty terms. You must campaign. That includes a field, mail, mail ballot, sign and social media program. Fill out the candidate questionnaires and get screened by the Democratic Party affiliated clubs and organizations. You are inviting trouble if you take it easy.  

Enjoy your NFL Sunday. 

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H-Town Latinos

This was in the Chron a couple of days ago: 

The lack of Latinos on the City Council undermines the legitimacy of Houston’s government, experts say, and is something that a prominent Hispanic organization is pushing to change with a lawsuit and ballot proposition. 

The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the largest Hispanic civil rights organizations in the country, is tackling what they characterize as a gross underrepresentation of Latinos in one of the most diverse cities in the U.S. by proposing that the five at-large positions on council elected citywide be replaced with four seats in heavily Hispanic districts. 

Currently, just one Hispanic — Robert Gallegos — holds a seat on the 16-member body. By contrast, 45 percent of Houston residents are Hispanic. 

“The most serious threat to the legitimacy of Houston city government is this idea that you can have half of the population of the city represented by 6 percent of the council,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. “Imagine if we flipped things around and there’s only one African American on the Houston City Council, or there’s only one Anglo, or there’s only one woman … It would be seen as a national travesty of democracy; it would be the subject of constant outcry.” 

Here is the entire read: Latino leaders plan lawsuit to change ‘gross’ underrepresentation in Houston City Council (houstonchronicle.com). 

Off the Kuff had a thoughtful take today on the issue. Here is from Charles: 

There’s a lot to say here, and I’ll try to get to the main points, but let me start by saying it’s a little more complex than what Garcia and Lira are arguing. There are multiple districts that have are at least plurality Latino – H, J, F, and A. H, currently held by CM Karla Cisneros, had reliably elected Latinos before Cisneros and likely will again; none of the others have elected Latinos. There is of course a big difference between “population”, “voting-age population” and “citizen voting-age population”, and that’s before we take into account voter registration and who generally turns out to vote in our odd-year elections, where 20% turnout is on the higher end. We could elect more Latinos with the map we have now, at least in theory. It very much hasn’t worked out that way in practice, and I doubt you’d find anyone who would argue that the current map is conducive to having more than two Latinos get elected from the current districts. 

It’s also true that Latinos have been shut out from the At Large seats since the days of Orlando Sanchez and Gracie Saenz twenty years ago. We also haven’t had a lot of strong Latino contenders for At Large seats lately. In 2015, no Latinos ran for At Large #3 or #5, and the only one in At Large #1 was perennial candidate James Partsch-Galvan. There were Latinos in all the At Large races in 2019, but none of them raised any money. That’s what Garcia and Lira are saying, and others have said it before them, but it just doesn’t take as much money to run a credible At Large campaign as it does to run for Mayor. Mayoral candidates need well over a million bucks, but the big money candidates for At Large raise in the $200-400K range. Not nothing, but not a huge pile of money either. It’s a bit of a vicious circle – people who might want to run are discouraged because it’s hard for them to raise money and the recent record of citywide Latino candidates is brutal, which leads to a paucity of such candidates for anyone to support. 

I can’t leave this point without bringing up, once again, the 2007 At Large #5 runoff, in which Jolanda Jones defeated Joe Trevino in a race where about 25K total votes were cast. Jones had run citywide before (in At Large #3) and was better known, and the other runoffs on the ballot were City Council District D and HISD District II, both of which favored Jones’ candidacy. Trevino was a longshot no matter how you looked at it, but still. This was the clearest shot to get a Latino elected citywide, and he got bupkus in terms of financial support, including from the folks who had been threatening to sue to force City Council redistricting prior to the 2010 Census. Public support of campaigns and candidates is a complicated and nuanced thing that is more often solicited than given, I get that. I’m just saying, none of the folks who were lamenting the lack of Latino representation on Houston City Council were moved to write Joe Trevino a $100 check. Make of that what you will. 

(There was also the Michael Kubosh-Roy Morales runoff of 2013. The politics of that one are different, for obvious reasons. I went back and looked, and Roy Morales actually raised about $50K for that runoff, which isn’t too shabby. There were only a couple of Latino names among his donors, though. Again, make of that what you will.) 

Moving on. I have generally been supportive of having the hybrid district/At Large Council that we have. At least if you have a sub-par Council person in your district, you still have five At Large members you can turn to for support if you need it, and I think there’s value in having people who need to have a broader perspective. That said, I’d bet that most of the At Large members we have had over the past 20 or so years have come from a limited geographical distribution – this was very much the problem with Austin’s at large system, where nearly everyone on their Council came from the same part of town – and let’s just say that some of our At Large members are better than others and leave it at that. All in all, I don’t think it would be a great loss to change to an all-district system, and I would be inclined to support it if and when it comes to a vote. I’d like to see the proposal first – there are, as we well know, good and not-so-good ways to draw maps – but as a concept, I support it. 

Here is all of Charles: Is it time to ditch At Large seats on Houston City Council? – Off the Kuff. 

Nobody wants to hear Commentary’s take on this. What do I know? Honestly, though, I do think I can address this with a bit of authority. Aw, shucks, with the most authority. 

I think if there is going to be a lawsuit filed, file it against the H-Town Latino community. Since the days of Gracie Saenz and Orlando Sanchez serving as at-large council members, the Latino community has not really gotten serious about getting behind an at-large Latino or Latina candidate. Not once. 

In 2013, former Houston Professional Firefighter union honcho Roland Chavez made a bid for an at-large seat and ended up in fifth place. He did not get much support from Latino leadership. 

It would be nice for someone to step forward and say they will be the Latino candidate running at-large and line-up the Latino leadership, who can then go to other communities and ask for support.  

Heck, it is time for a Latino or Latina to step forward and start running for the open City Controller position. Nobody is going to hand us anything.   

I would like to go to an all-single member district system. I will sign the position. The voters will not approve. African Americans have had success with the at-large system.  Why should they give it up. 

Latinos just need to put forward an effort. We have not in over twenty years. 

Mary Nan Huffman won last night’s H-Town City Council District G Special Election without a runoff. That’s impressive. 

Congrats to David Ortiz on getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Big Papi is deserving. I was watching the MLB Network yesterday when it was announced.  They talked about his postseason record. He has 17 postseason dingers. Not bad. Carlos Correa has 18 and Jose Altuve has 23. 

Big Papi had 541 career regular season dingers. 222 of them at Fenway. 2 at Minute Maid. 

I am not going to spend a lot of time on those that didn’t get in. Look, I am a fan with a lot of knowledge of the game. I am not a baseball writer who does this for a living. I will leave it at that. 

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Alvarado Chair Again

This happened yesterday. See this tweet:  

Team Zaffirini @TeamZaffirini 

Congratulations to @CarolforTexas, who was re-elected by acclamation today to a third term as Chair of our Senate Democratic Caucus. She’s an impressive, articulate, passionate, and effective leader. #txlege 

I am not surprised by this. She certainly knows how to lead. 

The City of H-Town City Council District G Special Election is today. Did the Chron E-Board endorse in this race.  If they did, I missed it.   

There was a recent Chron story about folks getting killed by their disabled cars that are stranded on H-Town’s freeways. I do my share of driving on our freeways. Every time I see someone outside of their vehicle on the freeway, particularly the inside lane, I get worried and cringe. Folks are driving 80 MPH on those narrow lanes and one minor distraction is all it takes.  

Let me get this straight now.  Folks are upset because President Joe Biden called a Fox News reporter a stupid SOB. A Fox New reporter. He is a reporter for Fox News. Fox News is an outfit that has promoted the Big Lie. The Big Lie. A Fox News reporter is a stupid SOB. 

I guess Commentary is as protected as you can get. I am fully boosted. I wear the KN95 when I am at the grocery store. I always travel with hand sanitizer. I drink red wine. See this from the Mirror: 

Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, several ‘tips and tricks’ that have been labelled as cures to the virus have been brought up from time to time. 

Many of them have fortunately been debunked, but a recent study has claimed that one specific alcoholic drink could reduce the risk of catching Covid. 

The research, which was published in Frontiers In Nutrition, comes from the British database UK Biobank, which were analyzed at Shenzhen Kangning Hospital in China. 

Here’s what you need to know about the research and what types of alcohol – if any – can actually protect you from catching Covid. 

According to the report, which studied drinking habits and Covid history during the pandemic, drinking red wine could reduce the risk of Covid infection. 

Here is the entire read: Drinking red wine can reduce risk of catching Covid, according to new research – Mirror Online. 

I just hope there isn’t a rush to stock up on red wine.

On a kind of related note, someone got knocked off the heart transplant recipient list because they will not get vaccinated. I am good with that. 

The Baseball Hall of Fame will announce their new inductees this afternoon.  I will try to remember and watch. 

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Texas’s Voting Rights Leader

The Texas legislature’s leading champion of voting rights, State Sen. Carol Alvarado, authored an Op-Ed on the latest assault on our right to vote by Texas state government. The Op-Ed appeared in yesterday’s Chron. Here it is: 

Opinion: It’s past time for online voter registration in Texas 

The state’s chief election officer, the Texas secretary of state, recently announced that supply chain issues have forced the state to reduce the number of voter registration card applications available for the public. 

Voter registration organizations that have requested applications are only receiving a fraction of the number they request. 

This is inexcusable, indefensible and downright embarrassing. 

New 18-year-old adults, citizens who have moved to Texas from other states, naturalized citizens and previously unregistered Texans might not be able to exercise their right to vote in the upcoming election on March 1 because of a supply shortage of voter registration cards. 

We are not talking about not being able to buy toilet paper — it is our sacred right to cast a vote. This is sad, tragic, laughable and happening in real time. 

It didn’t have to be this way. 

I have filed legislation to allow universal online voter registration every session since 2013 and I will file a bill next session. 

If my bill gets a hearing, I will not need to call up a panel of experts to testify why we need the bill; I will just point to the events of this past week to make a compelling case. 

Online voter registration is safer, more secure and cheaper than its paper equivalent. 

It was first implemented close to 20 years ago in Arizona. Now 42 states and the District of Columbia allow online voter registration. This includes red, blue, purple, small and large states. 

Notably there have been no major scandals involving fraud or other issues that have caused states to scale back use of online voter registration. 

In August 2020, a federal court ruled that Texas was in violation of the National Voter Registration Act because the state was not giving residents the option to register to vote when they renewed their driver’s license. 

Texas was forced to comply and since then, 1.5 million Texans have used the online system to register to vote or change their voter registration address. We have not heard any reports from the Texas secretary of state that this system is being abused with fraudulent registrants. 

This latest episode of voting in Texas confirms the obvious. Texas is not a voter friendly state. 

Last summer, I stood for 15 hours straight on the floor of the state Senate to bring national attention to legislation that makes it difficult for Texans to access the ballot box. 

During my filibuster Texans from across the state sent me their concerns about this bill, including how difficult it would be for older Texans, veterans and those with disabilities to cast their vote. 

Nevertheless, Texas adopted the most restrictive voting measure of any state in the nation and we are already paying the price. 

One of the provisions I spoke out against was a new requirement for voters to include their state-issued ID card number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on mail ballot applications. The number needs to be the exact same one a voter used when they first registered to vote — even if it was decades ago. If the number doesn’t match, then the application must be rejected. 

So if you used your driver’s license number when you registered to vote but then you used your Social Security number for the mail ballot application, you’re out of luck. I warned that mail ballot applications would be rejected because of this unnecessary requirement. I was correct. 

We are now getting reports that election officials across the state have been forced to reject up to half of mail ballot applications because of confusion over what must be included on the application. What’s worse is the state has not provided a way for voters to correct their applications. 

We’re running out of time; mail ballots are already being sent out. It looks like the so-called election integrity legislation will disenfranchise many Democratic and Republican party primary voters. It is no secret that those in control of state government want to make it hard for certain folks to vote. 

That was on full display last year during the regular legislative session and subsequent special called sessions. There is, however, a difference in making it harder to vote and not letting you vote. 

The jig is up. Enough. Let’s join the rest of the country in the 21st century and get online with voter registration. 

Nice Op-Ed. It got a lot of play, likes and retweets on social media yesterday.  The Op-Ed had a lot of good quotes and lines that folks put out. 

Sen. Alvarado is one of my best friends and client. You already know that though. 

The Trib today has a story on the mail ballot fiasco Texas is facing right now. Here is the Trib piece: Texas vote-by-mail rejections add to confusion around new law | The Texas Tribune. 

The Breitbart fella on “What’s Your Point” yesterday morning  said about the mail ballot mess that it was “much ado about nothing.” 

He is just confirming what Sen. Alvarado wrote: “Texas is not a voter friendly state.” 

This past weekend, Harris County Judge Democratic candidate Erica Davis sent me a mail ballot application. It was a template of the form from the Texas Secretary of State. It also was not prefilled out, where all you must do is add your ID, social security last four digits, sign, put a stamp on it, and mail.  

I went online to check the status of my mail ballot and my Dad’s. Our mail ballots have been approved. I know how to navigate the system.  A lot of folks don’t. 

The Chron E-Board started rolling out their primary endorsements yesterday. They also put out their guidelines on their endorsement process. Here are some of their guidelines: 

If newspapers are objective, why recommend candidates? Newspapers don’t endorse candidates. Editorial boards do. The editorial board is separate from the newsroom. It is made up of opinion journalists with wide-ranging expertise whose consensus opinions and recommendations represent the voice of the institution — defined as the board members, their editor and the publisher. We do it as a service to our readers and to our democracy, which cannot flourish without an informed citizenry. For many busy people, researching each candidate isn’t possible. Rather than turn to partisan slates, some with pay-to-play motivations, we offer an alternative: informed candidate recommendations from nonpartisan journalists based on facts and careful analysis. 

Which races are included in the recommendations? Every contested statewide race, from governor to the Texas Supreme Court. Every contested race for Congress and the Texas Legislature on the Harris County ballot. Locally, we’ll cover every contested Harris County office and the eight contested races for Harris County criminal district judge. 

Any races we’re skipping? Yes. To protect quality, we’ve had to reduce quantity. We won’t recommend primary candidates for county courts of law or justices of the peace, or for civil, family or juvenile benches. We regret these omissions and hope to include them in future elections. 

That certainly was an epic NFL playoff weekend. Wow! In normal times, I probably would have rooted for Aaron Rodgers this past Saturday. After he got stupid, I rooted for the 49ers. 

Did I say wow! 

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Forget the Latinos

Chris Tomlinson is a Chron business columnist.  He is also one of the authors of the book “Forget the Alamo” that came out last year. He has a take on the new news outlet that is coming to H-Town. Here it is: Tomlinson: Billionaires’ good intentions for Texas journalism come with high risks (houstonchronicle.com). 

He is not really a fan of the new news venture. He is also not well informed about local news operations.  Here is part of his take:  

What I find difficult to grasp is why donors are financing a new nonprofit that will compete for funding in a city with a healthy daily newspaper, four television news outlets, a significant public media operation, multiple talk radio stations and dozens of websites. 

There are six local television news outlets. I presume he left out the two Spanish-language TV stations, Telemundo and Univision. They get big ratings too. Forget the Latinos. Such a glaring omission. 

On a related note, I don’t think the Chron is happy with the new news outlet setting up shop here in H-Town. 

In the looking back section of today’s Chron, it says two years ago today, in the USA, the first known case of COVID-19 surfaced in the state of Washington with this quote: 

“U.S. officials stressed that they believed the overall risk of the virus to the American public remained low.” 

That is 860,000 dead in the USA including 78,000 in Texas. How did your last two years go? 

The Dean got some real good front page coverage in the hard copy of the Chron today. Here is the online version: As amendment gives some Texas lawmakers $140K annual pension, one legislator says ‘hell no’ to offer (houstonchronicle.com). 

The Dean is saying heck no to a cozy and sweet pension deal. Nice press for The Dean. It doesn’t get any better than that. 

I don’t care who you are. You never want the FBI looking at your stuff right before an election. Just ask former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton back in 2016. Cong. Henry Cuellar from Laredo must be feeling a bit queasy now that his home has been raided by the FBI a couple of days ago. Cong. Cuellar is in a tough reelection fight against Jessica Cisneros who came within a few percentage points of knocking him off two years ago. 

It was very cold yesterday and I had flashbacks from 13 months ago. 

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New News Outlet

Commentary was surprised to hear this yesterday. Here is from the Chron: 

Five foundations, including three local philanthropies, are investing more than $20 million to launch an independent nonprofit news outlet in Houston, entering the city’s competitive media landscape. 

The Houston Endowment, the Kinder Foundation and Arnold Ventures on Wednesday said the yet-to-be-named news operation will be one of the largest of its kind nationally when it launches late this year or early next year on multiple platforms. The philanthropies, joined by journalism foundations The American Journalism Project and the Knight Foundation, said they seek to “elevate the voices of Houstonians” and “answer the community’s calls for additional news coverage.” 

“All Houstonians deserve to be informed about the issues that impact their lives,” said Ann Stern, CEO of the Houston Endowment. “We are thrilled to support the expansion of local reporting in Greater Houston – combining the highest standards of journalism with an innovative community-focused reporting model.” 

Here is the entire read: Houston philanthropies invest $20M to launch nonprofit news outlet (houstonchronicle.com). 

I wonder if it is going to be the Trib comes to H-Town.  

Commentary looks at it this way.  The more the merrier. I don’t believe that too much news coverage is a bad thing. Remember how sad we were when the Houston Post folded like 25 or so years ago. 

I watch the local news when I get up. They cover every bar and convenience store shooting. We need more investigative journalism in H-Town. 

Evan Smith, the co-founder of the Trib is leaving the Trib this year. Maybe they can recruit him to put together H-Town’s new news outlet. 

Commentary glanced at a few campaign contribution and expenditure reports over at Harris County. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo is sitting on over a million bucks.  I couldn’t find a report for Erica Davis. 

On the GOP side, Vidal Martinez raised over half a million bucks. He has five times more cash-on-hand than his nearest competitor in the GOP primary for county judge.  

One year ago today, President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris were sworn in.  It has been quite a year for sure. 

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Space Cowboys

The Astros own the Sugar Land Skeeters, the AAA minor league team. Yesterday, the Astros announced a rebranding event at Constellation Field, home of the Skeeters.  We just learned that the team would have a name change to Space Cowboys.  I immediately thought of the Steve Miller Band tune, “The Joker,” and here are some of the lyrics: 

Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah 
Some call me the gangster of love 
Some people call me Maurice 
‘Cause I speak of the pompatus of love 

And this: 

I’m a joker, I’m a smoker 
I’m a midnight toker 
I get my loving on the run 

We are going to have fun with the Space Cowboys. 

The arsehole Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted this moronic crap yesterday: 

“I’m running for re-election to pass a Taxpayer Bill of Rights that will DELIVER substantial and lasting property tax cuts.” 

That’s not going to happen, and he knows better and knows that. An income tax is off the table. Sales taxes won’t go up. Unless you gut school districts and local government and that’s not going to happen.  Communities want their schools, police and fire departments, and parks funded.  They also want trash picked up and reliable drinking water. Abbott should try disbanding his border army for starters and see what kind of relief taxpayers get. 

I saw this tweet last night: 

Scott Braddock 

@scottbraddock 

Any Texas Democrats betting on a blackout isn’t a coin flip. It’s betting $100 on red 7 at the roulette table. Long odds but a jackpot if it hits #txlege 

Elections are not won hoping for a grid failure.  We can beat the GOP in Texas on them running Texas into the ground. 

An HPD officer handed me a moving violation citation last October over in my neighborhood. I told the officer at the time that I didn’t do anything wrong. A few days later, I got some letters from those law firms who specialize in traffic court, so I hired a firm. 

My court date was yesterday over on Lubbock Street. I wasn’t looking forward to it.  I was surprised when I drove up with the parking availability. I have the parking meter app, so I just tapped my phone two or three times and didn’t have to slip the piece of paper under my wiper blade. 

I was in and out of the municipal court building in less than 45 minutes with the case being dismissed.  Nice job to the judge running Court #11 yesterday. I am glad I hired the law firm. It was worth it. 

Yesterday, I signed up with the USPS to get the 4 free COVID-19 tests and was rejected. They said my address came up as a business address and the test gizmos were only being sent to residential addresses. Maybe I need to remove the neon sign in my front yard. Sigh. 

Commentary is going to take a wild guess and say none of the candidates running in the H-Town City Council District G special election had a mail ballot component. Come on! That’s H-Town campaign 101. Every campaign should have a mail ballot component. Only 280 mail ballots have been sent to voters and only 73 have been returned. The election is in 6 days. 

Even in this voter suppression climate, you adjust the application with bold red font telling the 65 and older voter to add their Texas ID and last four SSN digits. That is negligent if you ask Commentary. Guess what? 

Maybe they should have let Isabel Longoria send out mail ballots to a few thousand Westside voters. 

My pal Jose tweeted this yesterday: 

Jose de Jesus Ortiz 

@OrtizKicks 

Happy birthday Kevin Costner. My favorite Costner movies: Dances with Wolves, Field of Dreams,  McFarland, USA, Tin Cup, Thirteen Days 

I won’t argue with Jose. Five is an injustice though.  “Bull Durham,” “No Way Out,” “Waterworld,” “For Love of the Game,” “The Bodyguard,” “The Untouchables,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “JFK,” and “A Perfect World” to name a few. 

I just watched “Draft Day” the other day which is very entertaining.  

Costner gets a lot of praise for his TV’s “Yellowstone,” but don’t forget “Hatfields & McCoys.” 

I actually ran into Costner in the 1990s at the Four Seasons Hotel in Downtown H-Town. It was right after Mayor Bob Lanier’s victory party for his reelection. I remember Costner was wearing a full length camel hair coat.  I took a picture of him and my best friend. I asked him for an autograph and he signed it with his name and “Tin Cup” that he was in town filming. 

69 years ago today, Desi Arnaz, Jr. was born. 69 years ago today, “I Love Lucy” aired the episode where Little Ricky was born. 

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Campaign Money

Campaign contribution and expenditure reports are due today for state and local races.  Beto just announced that he has raised $7.2 million in just six weeks. Not bad at all. 

Here is what Commentary will be interested in seeing over the next day or so. Locally, what does Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo show and what does her opponent Erica David have in cash on hand.  Same for the Democratic candidates running in the newly redrawn Harris County Commissioner Precinct 4. 

I will be looking at how the Democratic candidates fare in State House District 147. 

On the statewide level, I want to know how Democrats running for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General are doing. 

On the GOP side we know that arsehole Gov. Greg Abbott will raise a ton of money. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will also likely announce a nice haul. It will be interesting to see how much AG Ken Paxton’s challengers announce they have in the bank. 

As I kind of mentioned yesterday, GOP elected officials who also support voter suppression put out tweets on MLK yesterday and got rightly dunked on. What did they expect? 

I don’t know what to say about this from Austin’s NPR station: 

The Texas Secretary of State’s office is having more trouble than usual getting enough voter registration cards to groups who help Texans register to vote. 

Sam Taylor, assistant secretary of state for communications, said supply chain issues have made it harder and more expensive to get paper, which means the Secretary of State’s office will be giving out fewer voter registration forms to groups ahead of elections this year. 

“We are limited in what we can supply this year, because of the paper shortage and the cost constraints due to the price of paper and the supply of paper,” he said. 

Grace Chimene, the president of the League of Women Voters of Texas, said it is not unusual for the Secretary of State to not have enough forms to fill all the requests it gets from groups like hers ahead of elections. This particular shortage, however, is affecting an important part of her group’s work: registering thousands of newly naturalized citizens. 

Chimene said in previous years, her group, which has chapters across the state, has been able to get enough forms to pass out at naturalization ceremonies. Often, she said, the group partners with the state to give out several thousand forms at each ceremony. 

“The League in Houston registers about 30,000 new citizens every year through these ceremonies in the past,” Chimene said. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a mix of in-person and remote ceremonies. Chimene said her group has either been handing out voter registration materials at in-person events or they’ve been sending out packets they put together ahead of time to those new citizens. 

Here is the entire read: Texas says supply chain issues have limited the number of voter registration forms it can give out | KUT Radio, Austin’s NPR Station. 

Supply chain issues and the inflation thing. It all boils down to the dumbarses who refuse to get vaccinated. Get the GD shot you morons! 

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For County Judge

Erica Davis, candidate for Harris County Judge in the Democratic primary, was on “What’s Your Point” yesterday for a brief interview. She had a tough on crime law enforcement message. 

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo completed the Houston marathon yesterday.  I wonder if any of her predecessors ever ran the marathon. How many other local elected officials have run the marathon? 

Commentary is voting for Judge Hidalgo.  

This past Saturday marked the 80^th anniversary of the baseball letter from President Franklin Roosevelt to the MLB Commissioner encouraging him to keep playing baseball as we were into the second month of World War II. 

The past few days several folks put out warning tweets of sorts.  Don’t tweet out MLK message today if you oppose the voting rights bill that is being held up in the U.S. Senate. 

Let’s see. Pro tennis star hot shot doesn’t want to get vaccinated. Pro tennis star wants to go play tennis in a country that requires vaccines. Country says nope. Get the shot. 

Commentary won’t be piling on the Cowboys on how the game ended yesterday. I get what they were trying to do. They were just a couple of seconds short.   

Astros starting right fielder Kyle Tucker is 25 today. Happy Birthday Kyle? 

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