Greg's Opinion

Just stumbled onto this via channel surfing (Ch. 2, to be precise): an informercial for the Hotze Wellness Center. It's in three parts (1, 2, 3) over at Hotze's YouTube channel if you're really in need of a spectacle. For background, the Houston Press ran a pretty lengthy piece on Hotze's medical credentials back in 2005.

» NYT: Geithner Said to Be Chosen for Treasury Secretary

Good news, everyone ...

President-elect Barack Obama will name Timothy F. Geithner to be his Treasury Secretary, according to a knowledgeable Democrat, elevating a Treasury veteran who as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has all year been at the center of the worsening economic crisis.

Count me as a fan, as the guy sounds like the perfect midpoint between Rubin & Summers in terms of policy and style.

Speaking of Summers ...

Mr. Summers is likely to be named as an economics adviser as well, two sources familiar with the Obama transition said, with the expectation that eventually he will be named to the Federal Reserve Board, perhaps as successor to Chairman Ben Bernanke.

On this one, color me skeptical. On the one hand, Summers is one of the top economic minds of the day. But on the other hand, he leans a bit too easily toward intervention. Maybe that's not going to be as big a factor with the Fed still operating as a team environment. And there's little doubt that Summers' congressional briefings would be much more entertaining than those of Greenspan.

Obama could do a lot worse than naming Summers to the Fed, but is it too much to ask that he might find a somewhat better option? Granted, if you were to move Geithner over to the Fed, then it just opens the door for Summers to return to Treasury. I know, I know ... pick my poison and be done with it. For now, Geithner at Treasury makes for great news.

» Chron: Oilers strike it rich with fumble return ... Pearland needs OT to live another week.

» Chron: Hightower edges North Shore in 28-21 thriller ... meanwhile, North Shore goes down in week 2. It's really starting to feel like playoff season now. Hightower wasn't exactly a scrub team, but this is still an upset. So much for my hopes of a Trinity-North Shore showdown @ Reliant. And the Houston-area division just got a little thinner at the top. For now, bank on Pearland and Hightower being the cream of the crop.

» DMN: Rockwall-Heath 58, Hillcrest 21 ... more 4A madness here, with UH's QB commit rolling along. Amazing that there's a school with a QB finishing off about 80% of his passes in a spread offense, yet the team runs the ball 4:1 and gets all their TDs on the ground in this game. Hope the kid doesn't change his mind and head elsewhere ... his stats and highlights indicate he could be an interesting future at UH.

» Chron: UH wary of 'trap' game against UTEP today ... about to get ready to head out for this. I'll be the one rooting for offense today. A 70-63 win by UH would really sit well with me.

» 5pm ... Trinty vs Plano ... I should be a nervous wreck by sometime around 5:01.

The rundown ...

» Video preview by Whitmire & Plano East coach

» Bio article on Plano's All-Everything, Rex Burkhead. From the "caught my eye" department:

When Plano takes the Texas Stadium field against undefeated Euless Trinity at 5 p.m. Saturday, Burkhead will be playing in his 51st high school game. He's been on the varsity since ninth grade and a starter since 10th grade, when he played quarterback.

And one more thing: Burkhead was a 5-8 dunking freshman guard on Plano's state championship basketball team in 2006. Maybe he will finally have time to decide on a college between Plano basketball games.

Where he goes will depend on what position he ultimately decides to play.

Some colleges see Burkhead as a running back. Some see him as a slot receiver and some as a defensive back. Ole Miss wants him as a quarterback, envisioning him in the role Darren McFadden once played for Arkansas, McCullough said.

Hopefully he goes to a school where I can enjoy watching him play. Can't imagine I'd be as impressed with him if he's suited up in burnt orange.

» All of the DMN pickers pick Trinity. I like that kind of enthusiasm, but it makes me feel a bit nervous now. I mean, the old standard was "Never pick against Katy." Meaning, are they picking for safety purposes or are they picking because they really thought through how our O/D-lines measure up against Plano's speed?

» Closer to home: North Shore vs Hightower.

Two-car garages, multi-degreed parents, and Taqwacore ... meet the suburbs of today:

About 170,000 Muslims live in the Houston metropolitan area. Hiba and her family live 30 minutes from Houston in Sugar Land, population 80,000, named after the Imperial Sugar Co. They have a two-story brick home with a basketball hoop, a double-car garage, and a tan minivan out front.

It is the largely conservative hometown of Tom DeLay, former Republican House majority leader, as well as Norm Mason, former chairman of the Texas Christian Coalition. It boasts a thriving oil industry, which employs Hiba's dad as a petroleum engineer. Her mother is a resident in a psychiatric studies program in New York who flies home on her breaks and weekends.

Hiba's school, Kempner High, has 2,700 students, with an almost equal distribution of white and Asian students, including Middle Easterners, and about 20% Latinos and 16% African Americans. The school's Muslim Students Assn. boasts nearly 100 members and meets every Friday.

» Salon: Ten picks for Obama's Supreme Court

Names to know for the most immediate SCOTUS opening. First up, the estrogen, legal eagle set:

• Sonia Sotomayor
  
• Elena Kagan
  
• Diane P. Wood
  
• Leah Ward Sears

Sotomayor, Sears and Kagan look like obvious heavy-hitters on this list while also adding some instant diversity. Sotomayor looks like a cinch for confirmation since there's bound to be some GOP Senators who voted for her confirmation by George H.W. Bush, but I can't say I wouldn't mind a slight poke in the eye with Kagan avenging her stalled nomination by Clinton. Sears would bring the momentary oddity of watching Zell Miller potentially say something nice about a Democrat.

The Electeds ...

• Deval Patrick
  
• Jennifer Granholm

On principal, I'm not crazy about either. In this case, neither has served in a judicial capacity. If, on the other hand, I were to have a gun put to my head and forced to choose, I probably would prefer Patrick. But much of the reasoning has more to do with what type of Governor and campaigner each has been (Granholm dull, Patrick not) than it does anything else.

The Rest ...

• Merrick Garland
  
• Cass Sunstein
  
• Harold Hongju Koh
  
• Ruben Castillo

From this group, I'm all in favor of Sunstein. For precisely some of the reasons that some Democrats/liberals dislike him, I feel more secure in advocating his name. That said, my hunch is that he's the new Lawrence Tribe. His paper trail is too long and I'm guessing it's easier to suggest something derogatory from a tilted reading of his work somewhere. The rest, it's more a question of familiarity - or, more specifically, a lack of familiarity.

The article drops five names for possible replacement, including the possibility of Scalia. Boy, that's tempting to think about. Just a shame that his entertaining, extra-Constitutional reasoning will be missed from the rare reading of SCOTUS opinions. What will I read for comedic effect then?

It'll be interesting to see how fast some of these names cycle out of rotation. Obama will likely have some quick appointments to the appellate courts that will serve as names for later rounds of consideration. I can see a couple of these names lasting in the hopper for eight years, but I doubt all of them will.

» Politico: Demographics shifting, but GOP isn't (Robert Lang)

As the U.S. expands and diversifies, it is becoming more urban. The Census finds that 83 percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas and that well over half live in regions with more than 1 million residents. By other calculations, two-thirds of people added by 2040 will settle in just 20 megapolitan areas -- massive urban complexes that contain more than 5 million residents.

Were just the big metro areas to vote, the presidential race would be a rout every time. The Democrats dominate major urban regions. An analysis by the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech found that Barack Obama won the votes in the nation's top 50 metro areas -- often by double-digit margins.

Worse for Republicans, in 2006 and 2008, Democrats significantly expanded the areas of the metros they won. Their electoral dominance has spilled out of cities and close-in suburbs and now reaches into the kinds of sprawling subdivisions that were once reliably Republican. The suburbs in key swing states such as Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia played a particularly decisive role in delivering the presidency to Democrats.

The numbers bear this out ... it's not just the urban centers that are racking up the score for Democratic candidates. It's also the layer of suburbs closest to them. For a Texas-centric spin on this: if Texas Democrats aren't playing to win Fort Bend County in 2010 and/or 2012, they aren't playing to win ... period. Collin and Williamson are a step behind but obviously warrant similar effort.

Lang attempts to shift the understanding of the regional definitions by defining "Metros" - basically the combination of urban centers and the most proximate suburbs. I don't know that the understanding of what makes up a "Metro" is fully there just yet ... but it's a good enough shorthand to understand what his intent is.

Unintended(?) humor of the day ...

** Turns out the new twin condo towers along the edge of Hermann Park and visible from Texas 288 aren't so alike after all. **
This isn't a sentence. Sentences have a subject and a verb, not just a verb. FAIL.

"FAIL" isn't a sentence. Sentences have a subject and a verb. Or so I'm told.

» FWST: Euless Trinity football has quickly become an elite program

Odessa Permian, Converse Judson, Plano and Southlake Carroll are some of the most storied football programs in Texas, combining for 34 wins this season and 26 state championships in history.

Now, what do all these teams have in common?

Euless Trinity has played them all in the past three seasons.

We're still waiting for the rematch against Carroll, too.

With the 70-30 win over Tulsa, the speculation begins in earnest ...

As bowl time approaches, the so-called experts have the Cougars headed in a few different directions.

Neither of ESPN's experts have the Cougars in the Liberty Bowl. Mark Schlabach has East Carolina representing C-USA and Bruce Feldman has Tulsa (both playing Vanderbilt). Both have the Cougars in the GMAC Bowl.

College Football News has the Cougars in the Jan. 2 Liberty Bowl, where they will play Ole Miss. But then they also have the Cougars playing TCU in the Dec. 31 Armed Forces Bowl. Huh?

CBS Sportsline.com has the Cougars headed to Memphis for a Liberty Bowl matchup with Kentucky. It also has Tulsa going to the Texas Bowl (playing Western Michigan) and Rice heading up to Fort Worth to play Air Force in the Armed Forces Bowl.

I won't even bother picking a preference. I'm obviously glad to see my alma mater tearing up the close approximation of a football conference that is C-USA. Based on the early losses, I had them pegged as "inconsistent." I may be proven wrong when the season comes to an end ... if not already.

Progress seems afoot in Utah ...

McCain beat Obama 62 percent to 35 percent in Utah. But Obama had the strongest showing of any Democratic presidential hopeful in Utah since Hubert Humphrey ran in 1968.

He also won three counties -- Salt Lake, Grand and Summit -- while that last two Democratic candidates didn't win even one.

Most of the Democratic gains in the 2008 election happened in Salt Lake County. They won the straight-party voting, retained the county mayor's seat and picked up a seat on the County Council, giving them a 5 to 4 majority.

Democrats also claimed three new state House seats in the Sandy area, including one held by the sitting House Speaker, and one state Senate seat.

Perhaps the message will spread to Texas' own Montgomery County one of these days.

For transition junkies like me, this is the stuff heroin is made of ....

Decidedly, a raising of the expectations. But also a fairly succinct clarification of what to grade the first thousand days against.

Four for the price of one. These are Obama results in the Quad-County Region ...

From Texas 2008

Coding is as follows:
Dark Red ... Obama 0-25%
Red ... Obama 25-40%
Pink ... Obama 40-50%
Lt. Blue ... Obama 50-60%
Blue ... Obama 60%+

ADD-ON: Still on the to-do list: Nueces, El Paso, McLennan ... the last of which is apparently now online.

» WaPo: Giving Up On God (Kathleen Parker)

If there's one thing I feel I can safely promise my readership, it's that I don't expect to delve too deeply in the "Republican Wilderness" series as today's GOP tries to dig itself out of the very well-dug hole they've created for themselves. But Kathleen Parker's latest is a notable exception for my interest ...

... the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth -- as long as we're setting ourselves free -- is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.

Ya know what's odd is that Kathleen Parker will, when it's all over and done with, probably have more hate mail from dissing Sarah Palin than suggesting the GOP shoo away politically conservative Christians from the party. In and of itself, that represents a symptom of the problem right there.

I mean, the Apostle Paul killed off actual Christians back in the day. Yet, who do you hear more ill spoken of ... him, or someone who once thought Walter Mondale (a former choirboy) would have been a good President?

Another part of the problem is on display with comments like this from the Brothers Judd blog:

After watching John McCain run the same sort of campaign that Bob Dole did, you can bank on the GOP returning to its winning formula of nominating an Evangelical governor. As it happens, we have three excellent choices for 2012: Jeb, Sarah, and Bobby Jindal.

Maybe their readership wasn't big enough for the GetReligion.org scorekeepers to excoriate Orrin for missing the fact that two of those named are Catholic. Not that there hasn't been a muddying of the waters in the historical distinctions of the two, but still.

Fifty-eight.

And #59 will be settled by a recount that may go either way, while #60 will be left up to the voters of Georgia in December. Even more surprising is that the Lieberman factor has been effectively settled (for the next two years, at least).

» WaPo: Remedying the Bias Perception (Deborah Howell)

From the annals of "Bad Ideas, 101" ...

The opinion pages have strong conservative voices; the editorial board includes centrists and conservatives; and there were editorials critical of Obama. Yet opinion was still weighted toward Obama. It's not hard to see why conservatives feel disrespected.

Are there ways to tackle this? More conservatives in newsrooms and rigorous editing would be two. The first is not easy: Editors hire not on the basis of beliefs but on talent in reporting, photography and editing, and hiring is at a standstill because of the economy. But newspapers have hired more minorities and women, so it can be done.

Rosenstiel said, "There should be more intellectual diversity among journalists. More conservatives in newsrooms will bring about better journalism. We need to be more vigilant and conscious in looking for bias. Our aims are pure, but our execution sometimes is not. Staff members should feel in their bones that unfairness will never be tolerated."

Literally, this is affirmative action for conservatism. Is this really how Republicans wish to be aided out of their self-inflicted wilderness?

My own reaction echoes Boehlert:

Who's stopping conservatives from being hired in newsrooms? Honestly. If Newsbusters can document how scores of qualified College Republican grads were passed over by local newspapers to poorly paying jobs to cover local zoning commission jobs simply because the applicants were conservative, we'd love to hear about it. Because right now there's nothing stopping young conservatives from joining newsrooms and working their way up from the bottom just like everybody else in media does. They just don't want to do it.

Put another way, If newsrooms tilt so tragically to the left, why don't conservatives try to get jobs in newsrooms? Why don't they jump at the chance to become poorly paid reporters in a dying industry? The answer: Conservatives would rather be partisan pundits and complain about the press and hope that people like Howell blame journalism.

Precisely why I've been rather unforgiving of the local variant of this concept - our friends over at what I affectionately dub "hateHouston." Whited and Linehan are free to act as a corrective if they so chose to. But they don't. They carp and complain. And when they're really on their game, they just call people names (sometimes with self-linking references to juice Google rankings). And on a bad day, complaining that Newkirk isn't posting their pithy comments.

Bottom line: it's an intellectually dishonest exercise and the sole purpose is to be taken seriously for something that's a lie upfront. The aim isn't to balance news or bring a greater sense of objectivity or fairness. It's to generate a permanent sense of mistrust in journalism.

People like Howell are, of course, the primary targets. As long as you can game the ref, the players on the court are rather inconsequential. It's something Eddie Sutton perfected as coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team. For you non-Texans (or those without a working memory of SWC basketball in the 80s, think Bob Knight) The way to fix the problem, though, isn't to beg and plead for rightwing punditry to "balance out" the real journalists ... it may be, however, to replace people like Howell who understand the game a little better.

ADD-ON: Washington Monthly's Steve Benen notes this re: CNN's "conservative affirmative action" ...

I'd just add that Howell may not appreciate the larger political dynamic, but the truth is conservative critics won't be satisfied anyway. CNN political team now features Stephen Hayes, David Brody, Alex Castellanos, Tara Wall, Frances Fragos Townsend, J.C. Watts, and William Bennett. The right still doesn't think CNN is nearly conservative enough.

» Portfolio.com: The End (Michael Lewis)

If you read only one thing this week, this oughtta be it. Block off the time - it's lengthy. But it's worth it. Before Lewis was "the Moneyball guy," he was "The Liar's Poker guy" to some of us. He revisits a bit of that topic here, complete with an interesting revival of John Gutfreund.

Though the article's primary interest is in some of the screwy mechanics of the modern subprime lending industry, there's a secondary interest in comparing the world in Liar's Poker with what we see around us today ...

I thought I was writing a period piece about the 1980s in America. Not for a moment did I suspect that the financial 1980s would last two full decades longer or that the difference in degree between Wall Street and ordinary life would swell into a difference in kind. I expected readers of the future to be outraged that back in 1986, the C.E.O. of Salomon Brothers, John Gutfreund, was paid $3.1 million; I expected them to gape in horror when I reported that one of our traders, Howie Rubin, had moved to Merrill Lynch, where he lost $250 million; I assumed they'd be shocked to learn that a Wall Street C.E.O. had only the vaguest idea of the risks his traders were running. What I didn't expect was that any future reader would look on my experience and say, "How quaint."

I had no great agenda, apart from telling what I took to be a remarkable tale, but if you got a few drinks in me and then asked what effect I thought my book would have on the world, I might have said something like, "I hope that college students trying to figure out what to do with their lives will read it and decide that it's silly to phony it up and abandon their passions to become financiers." I hoped that some bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and set out to sea.

Somehow that message failed to come across. Six months after Liar's Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They'd read my book as a how-to manual.

Interesting to me, because I read Liar's Poker around the time I switched majors from Poli Sci to Marketing. Not directly due to reading this book as a how-to manual of sorts, but it definitely had an ounce of sway in my opinion.

That makes Lewis' writing about Steve Eisman even more interesting to me (emphasis added):

Eisman, Daniel, and Moses then flew out to Las Vegas for an even bigger subprime conference. By now, Eisman knew everything he needed to know about the quality of the loans being made. He still didn't fully understand how the apparatus worked, but he knew that Wall Street had built a doomsday machine. He was at once opportunistic and outraged.

Their first stop was a speech given by the C.E.O. of Option One, the mortgage originator owned by H&R Block. When the guy got to the part of his speech about Option One's subprime-loan portfolio, he claimed to be expecting a modest default rate of 5 percent. Eisman raised his hand. Moses and Daniel sank into their chairs. "It wasn't a Q&A," says Moses. "The guy was giving a speech. He sees Steve's hand and says, 'Yes?'"

"Would you say that 5 percent is a probability or a possibility?" Eisman asked.

A probability, said the C.E.O., and he continued his speech.

Eisman had his hand up in the air again, waving it around. Oh, no, Moses thought. "The one thing Steve always says," Daniel explains, "is you must assume they are lying to you. They will always lie to you." Moses and Daniel both knew what Eisman thought of these subprime lenders but didn't see the need for him to express it here in this manner. For Eisman wasn't raising his hand to ask a question. He had his thumb and index finger in a big circle. He was using his fingers to speak on his behalf. Zero! they said.

"Yes?" the C.E.O. said, obviously irritated. "Is that another question?"

"No," said Eisman. "It's a zero. There is zero probability that your default rate will be 5 percent." The losses on subprime loans would be much, much greater. Before the guy could reply, Eisman's cell phone rang. Instead of shutting it off, Eisman reached into his pocket and answered it. "Excuse me," he said, standing up. "But I need to take this call." And with that, he walked out.

Eisman's willingness to be abrasive in order to get to the heart of the matter was obvious to all; what was harder to see was his credulity: He actually wanted to believe in the system. As quick as he was to cry bullshit when he saw it, he was still shocked by bad behavior. That night in Vegas, he was seated at dinner beside a really nice guy who invested in mortgage C.D.O.'s--collateralized debt obligations. By then, Eisman thought he knew what he needed to know about C.D.O.'s. He didn't, it turned out.

Honestly, I think I recognize that guy.

Elite media type meets Texas barbeque .... lengthy, well-written essay ensues.

I haven't partaken of Snow's BBQ in Lexington. I do try and find an excuse to hit any place listed in the annual Texas Monthly listing (Willy Ray's in Beaumont was last year's stop). But I tend to grade BBQ joints on their beef and sauce rather than their sausage and ambiance. A sliced BBQ sandwich will usually tell me more about the place than anything else.

But that's just me. Besides, I was spoiled with free BBQ by grandparents with their own restaurant in Center, TX.

My bias is as follows: Ed Martin knows all. Hence, it's probably not a shock that I agree with him on his dissection of the results in Harris County.

In particular:

The early vote vs. E Day [Election Day] pattern was not unique to Harris Co., so that is a false criticism. Check out Travis, Dallas, Tarrant and the whole state - a huge majority of voters statewide voted early. I wasn't on the ground in Harris Co. on E Day, but the county party had at least 7 or 8 satellite offices all over the county and there was phone, mail, TV and radio communications. I know I was emailing them a radio spot cut down to a sound truck tape for use in precincts that were not performing early on E Day, so there were folks out working on E Day.

...

So ... add up all the statewide, national and countywide races on the ballot and see Dems carrying over 80% of them in a much tougher county than Dallas where we weren't sneaking up on anyone, and given that we started at zero, it's a remarkable achievement by Harris County Democrats. Of course, there is always room for improvement and areas where we must do better in 2010, but that does not diminish what was achieved in 2008.

OK, so put me down as a question mark on the effectiveness of a "sound truck," but Ed's grasp on the challenge of Harris County as well as recognizing the overall impact of the wins we do have is spot-on by my standard.

Going into Early Voting, my hunch was that we'd win a couple of the administrative spots and about half the judicial spots. I'm downright giddy to report how wrong I was. I heard every complaint about what a slow day E-day was for us, but the numbers don't lie ... it was a great day since they still had to count the votes we banked early.

The same post has a somewhat shorter take by Matt Angle, which is good for an overview:

Harris County Republicans were not caught off guard. They raised and spent more than Democrats. They simply got outworked and outmanuevered.

Harris County has moved from being a Republican County to one where Democrats have a marginal advantage. It will take continued work and commitment by local Dems to grow and lock in this advantage.

See my conclusion in this post for how I think we do that.

I cannot tell you how wrong I think Mann's analysis is. But it's basically a distillation of the conventional wisdom here in Harris County. This is effectively the "Democratic turnout stunk in 2008" theory, stated as succinctly as I think can be done ...

Democrats had big plans for the Houston area this election. They dreamed of sweeping Harris County much as they had done in Dallas two years ago. They organized and fund-raised like never before--instituting a countywide coordinated campaign funded by millions of dollars (see "Turning Houston Blue," TO, October 17, 2008). They talked of a takeover in Texas' largest county that would be a foundation for Democrats to win future statewide races for governor and the U.S. Senate.

It didn't happen.

Voters didn't turn out in Harris County in the numbers that Democrats had hoped for. As a result, while Democrats captured a handful of key races in the Houston metro area, they came nowhere close to their much-talked-about sweep.

Democrats performed well in spots. Barack Obama narrowly carried Harris County--the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so in 44 years. The party captured a handful of closely watched state House races, including Kristi Thibaut's unseating of incumbent Republican Jim Murphy in western Harris County. Adrian Garcia became Harris County Sheriff, ousting the embattled GOP incumbent whose department has been the subject of a federal investigation following 140 inmate deaths at the county jail since 2001. Democrats also gained a major foothold at the county courthouse, winning 23 out of 40 judicial races. Every judge in the county had been Republican.

But the GOP leadership of Harris County remained mostly intact. County Judge Ed Emmett cruised to re-election. So did Tax Assessor Paul Bettencourt, whom Democrats were especially eager to beat because the office handles voter registration. They accuse Bettencourt of overzealously scrubbing the voter rolls to hold down Democratic turnout. (Bettencourt says he follows the law.)

The GOP also kept the Harris County district attorney's office. Republican Pat Lykos eked out a win by just half a percentage point over Brad Bradford. It was a particularly bitter loss for Democrats, not only because of the narrow margin but also because Bradford was bidding to become the state's second-ever African-American district attorney in a county with a history of racial bias in its criminal justice system.

Lower-than-expected turnout--especially on Election Day--scuttled Democratic hopes for a sweep. The Harris County Democratic Party hoped that 1.3 million voters would cast ballots. And during the early voting period, when more than 726,000 people voted, Democrats seemed well on their way to hitting their turnout targets. Most Democratic candidates led their races in the early voter totals.

But the plan fell apart on Election Day. Not even 450,000 voters turned out on November 4, roughly 200,000 fewer than expected. The GOP dominated among those voters. It was the scenario feared by some Democratic activists, who had worried that the Harris County coordinated campaign wasn't devoting enough resources to get-out-the-vote efforts. They had few paid organizers focused on ushering voters to the polls.

Harris County is majority Democratic--at least on paper--if only they all voted, says Fred Lewis, who worked on Democratic campaign efforts in Houston. Democrats don't need to persuade people with advertising. They have enough potential voters. The problem has been low turnout. And it still is.

The push and pent-up enthusiasm among Dems to vote early (myself among them) should have always been seen as approaching a zero-sum game. I say "approaching" because turnout actually went up in the areas we would have wanted them to go up:

African-American precincts:
2004 TO ... 45.9%
2008 TO ... 54.2%

Hispanic precincts:
2004 TO ... 46.3%
2008 TO ... 50.7%

Apartment precincts:
2004 TO ... 51.0%
2008 TO ... 58.3%

By comparison, the Anglo GOP precincts I've measured only went up by 2 points (71.5 to 73.7). The scoreboard from all of this indicates that our gains were in three areas:

1. We got improved turnout in Dem-friendly areas. Period. Suggestions to the contrary are not based on data. They're based on bored poll workers who couldn't figure out why everyone voted early.

2. Minds changed in every area. This was more critical in the non-Dem friendly areas since the Dem-friendly areas have been at something close to an effective ceiling of support since 2004. Still, there were gains everywhere.

3. New Stuff ... these areas moved with practically negligible attention from many party officials, both in terms of turnout and Dem performance. I'll proof my numbers on Monday, but I suspect the changes seen here will still be dramatic and telling.

The challenge going forward is how Democratic campaign operations recognize the expanded base we now have and properly reading Early Vote trends - something made appreciably difficult by the jacked-up Dem Primary in 2008.

So, LD Bell's band wasn't available to play for the team's Friday night playoff game. Apparently they were in Indianapolis for national band competition and finished second best overall.

I was pretty much indocrinated to hate everything about Bell, but credit where it's due ... congrats to a pretty darn good run by the band. A lot of my friends in high school were band geeks, so I know how amped up the kids get about stuff like this. By comparison, Trinity's own band has had a bit of turmoil in recent years.

Here's the routine that Bell performs this year: "The Quest." Not quite as entertaining as watching a band perform "Blister in the Sun," but I hear they reward things like technical marching design patterns and whatnot more than they do campy 80s tunes.

I'm adding some new micro-cluster definitions to the mix and throwing in a combination of results to see how each category voted. The additions from this post are as follows:

African-American
(Southside: 236, 237, 573; Acres Homes: 7, 401, 784; Fifth Ward: 169, 197, 327)

New Stuff - identifying where there is an increase in new home development over the past 4-6 years
(Northwest: 124, 143, 709; Spring: 245, 551; Southside: 336, 630; West: 463)

A little extra precaution is warranted in comparing 2004 precincts to 2008 precincts - particularly in the "New Stuff" precincts. I did my best to match them up, but I could probably stand to re-check them before I do any posting on the 2004-to-2008 electoral shifts.

Here's a handful of results for each group. The intent here is to show the high mark (Garcia), the Presidential numbers (guess!), and some of the losing candidates.

The hope here is to maybe uncover a few ideas as to why there's a disparity in the results of each candidate. On with the numbers ...

Anglo GOP

Obama ....... 6,624 - 21,068  (23.9%)

Garcia ...... 7,358 - 19,441  (27.5%)

Bradford .... 5,371 - 21,368  (20.1%)

Mahendru .... 4,828 - 21,183  (18.6%)

Murray ...... 4,903 - 21,135  (18.8%)

New Stuff

Obama ....... 13,130 - 17,343  (43.1%)

Garcia ...... 14,022 - 15,768  (47.1%)

Bradford .... 12,415 - 17,063  (42.1%)

Mahendru .... 11,685 - 17,358  (40.2%)

Murray ...... 12,042 - 17,030  (41.4%)

African-American

Obama ....... 9,458 - 191  (98.0%)

Garcia ...... 9,370 - 163  (98.3%)

Bradford .... 9,341 - 191  (98.0%)

Mahendru .... 9,181 - 240  (97.5%)

Murray ...... 9,268 - 182  (98.1%)

Hispanic

Obama ....... 7,613-3,905  (66.1%)

Garcia ...... 8,813-2,597  (77.2%)

Bradford .... 7,597-3,547  (68.2%)

Mahendru .... 7,397-3,533  (67.7%)

Murray ...... 7,563-3,409  (68.9%)

Apartments

Obama ....... 8,695-4,648  (65.2%)

Garcia ...... 8,763-4,197  (67.6%)

Bradford .... 8,164-4,739  (63.3%)

Mahendru .... 7,931-4,760  (62.5%)

Murray ...... 8,009-4,678  (63.1%)

And here's where we dissect some of the urban legends from reality ...

1. Can we please stop trashing Hispanic Democrats? They vote for black candidates too, ya know.

PDiddie speculated the following before diving into the numbers:

In fact I would submit (and for the record, I have not seen the data; I'm positing the following based on what little I do know) that African-American Democrats voted for Hispanics on the ballot, but Hispanic Democrats may not have returned the favor to black Dems. More telling, "what's in a name" had as much to do with who won and lost as party label, the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on teevee advertising, or anything else. And that naturally would not be due strictly to just Democrats and their biases.

Not to single out PDid, it's just that it's a common assumption that I've heard countless times. Right up there with "Hispanics don't vote." UGH! Nevermind that the two assumptions (which do often go hand in hand) are more than a little contradictary.

Anywho, the math above indicates that Hispanic voters did, indeed, "return the favor." Excepting the outlier of support for Adrian Garcia (who won or tied every precinct in his City Council district, btw!). In fact, Mekisha Murray got a higher percentage of votes than C.O. Bradford, who got a higher percentage than Ashish Mahendru, who got a higher percentage than Barack Obama. Bear in mind that this view is merely from a percentage view ... there's some seriously complex calculus if you want to measure total votes and the dropoff effect for each individual race.

2. Can we now turn our attention to the Anglo GOP area? ... and instead of suggesting that "this is where the racist Democrats are" maybe think more in terms of swing voters.

There was an overall spread of nearly 9 points between Mahendru and Garcia. Say what you will about names with too many vowels from the second half of the alphabet not playing well in Memorial Villages, but the spread between, say Obama and Mahendru was a more reasonable 5.3%.

The challenge here is that there are few sets of circumstances where Democrats tend to think in terms of outreach to heavily GOP areas as part of a campaign strategy. Well ... guess where the biggest dropoff was for Democrats? Hardcore Republican areas where the 20-25% or so voters that are either Democrats or potential Democratic voters just trailed off in their support down the ballot. Clearly, this needs to change.

Taken together, here's the Mahendru-Obama spread for each cluster:

Anglo GOP ............ -5.3%

New Stuff ............ -2.9%

African-American ..... -0.5%

Hispanic ............. +1.6%

Apartments ........... -2.7%

Check your assumptions about identity politics at the door, folks ... the numbers are telling a very different story.

» Chron: Keenum's on Tulsa's case in 70-30 win

Damn! I missed Case Keenum's coming out party to listen to high school football games?

This is obviously one weird season in Coogville. I mentally checked off this game as a loss and was hoping next week's game against UTEP would at least be interesting. Hope springs eternal for a great game next week.

I'm nearly done with mapping the state - to the extent that I can get my hands on canvass reports, that is. The state puts out a complete list in a few months that'll send me into another mapping tizzy at that time.

So, for now, I'm pivoting a bit to look at turnout numbers. Among the misconceptions to deal with is the belief among some that "Democrats just didn't turn out." On the surface, it's a ludicrous proposition considering the scope of wins in Harris County by Democrats.

Part of this, I suspect, is the uncommon sensation of seeing an Election Day lull after Early Vote was buzzing. But another part is due to the continued belief that "Hispanics don't vote." Amazing how reductionist logic gets when discussing election results.

Anyways, here's some sample info to nibble on. What I'm doing here is taking a few neighborhoods, picking some prototypical precincts and adding numbers. This isn't a comprehensive view, but one intended to gauge specific effects among certain types of voters.

The first batch of numbers looks at three types of neighborhoods:

Traditional Hispanic Neighborhoods, with a little bit of New Hispanic Neighborhoods
(East End: 65, 72, 154, 226, 231; Northside: 46, 339; Humble: 587, 599, 756)

Anglo GOP turf
(Memorial Villages: 213, 273, 440; River Oaks: 135, 227; Kingwood: 351, 459, 469, 563, 612, 670, 760)

Apartment-heavy Neighborhoods
(Gulfton/Sharpstown: 345, 430, 431, 567; Wilcrest: 559, 620, 626, 727)

I could probably stand to drop Pct. 620 from the last group ... there's ample number of homes in that box. But it's a key precinct of interest to me, so I'm using it for now.

Here's the findings (abbreviations explained at the end):

Hispanic
2004-RV ... 22,800
2008-RV ... 23,357

2004-TB ... 10,564
2008-TB ... 11,853

2004-TO ... 46.3%
2008-TO ... 50.7%

2004-share ... 2.09%
2008-share ...1.97%

Apartments
2004-RV ... 24,051
2008-RV ... 23,520

2004-TB ... 12,195
2008-TB ... 13,711

2004-TO ... 51.0%
2008-TO ... 58.3%

2004-share ... 2.21%
2008-share ...1.99%

Anglo GOP
2004-RV ... 37,534
2008-RV ... 38,202

2004-TB ... 26,832
2008-TB ... 28,166

2004-TO ... 71.5%
2008-TO ... 73.7%

2004-share ... 3.45%
2008-share ...3.23%

Some findings ...

1. Notice that the vote share comes down for each group. This isn't unexpected. If you have, say, 100 homes in the total clusters above and build 10 new homes elsewhere, the share of those original homes will come down. The share of the Hispanic vote comes down the least among all of the clusters identified here.

2. The Anglo GOP precincts' turnout growth is the least of all of these. My sense is that much of the gains possible here were obtained in 2004. The upside for flushing out yet more GOP voters in the traditional GOP territory is diminishing.

3. The turnout gains in the Apartment cluster is impressive. My own precinct showed negligible gains from 2000 to 2004. I shut down my precinct's election knowing full well what it meant for the countywide results: nothing good.

4. Somewhat like the issue of diminishing returns in GOP turnout increases, I think we're approaching a functional ceiling in the Apartment precincts. Those numbers will never approach those with established home-owning communities. At minimum, apartment-dwellers move more often, so there's a greater likelihood of having old addresses still on the books come election day. Throw in economic voting disparities (apartments poorer than Kingwood homeowners ... in general), and I think 60% in the apartments equates very much to 80% in River Oaks.

5. The movement in Voter Registration ... down in the apartments, up everywhere else. The highest? ... Hispanic precincts. What does this say about people who cry every two years about registering and turning out Hispanic voters? I think it stands in something close to a contrast, if not "stark." Yes, it would be fantastic to see turnout in those areas hit at least 60%, but aside from Tony Sanchez' isolated example of Webb County, it's just not been seen. Instead of whining, it would be a little nicer to see some of the professional whiners actually develop a plan, raise the money and do it themselves rather than pout.

With a little luck, I'll take a look at some Asian areas around the county and also some where new development is adding to the voter rolls. I'll also try and add some election results to these just to add some additional flavor. Naturally, I think the bigger story around the county wasn't the shifts in turnout or registration ... it was people just changing their minds.

* * *

Abbreviations
RV - Registered Voters
TB - Total Ballots
TO - Turnout Percentage
Share - % of the county ballots from this region

* * *

Cavaets

1. Note that defining an "Hispanic precinct" is not entirely the same thing as defining "Hispanic voters." What is commonly identified as Hispanic neighborhoods in Harris County usually consist of about 60-65% Hispanic population. The percentage of voters is a few ticks below that.

... well, more like Satuday All-day Lights. Could hold off in getting started on this post.

Region One's quadruple-header started off with the following ...

Southlake Carroll 31, Colleyville Heritage 7 ... This obviously doesn't qualify as an upset, but it's still an impressive win by a Carroll team thought to be down from the previous era's peak.

LD Bell and Hebron are headed into halftime, but this caught my attention:

Hebron's No. 83 (the kid's not listed) not only ran into his own player on a rush but also fumbled the ball on the same play. L.D. Bell DB Casey Rosenblatt pounced on the loose ball.

I know the Jonas Brothers are looking to move to the DFW area (Westlake, to be precise), but does Corey Haim have a kid playing football for Hebron?

4pm, the only game that matters kicks off.

UPDATE: Man, maybe I underestimated the value of heading up to Texas Stadium this weekend. From Wixon's halftime update:

Halftime of the Hebron-L.D. Bell game has been a little quiet because only one band performed: Hebron. One of its selections included the Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun." I'm not sure I've ever heard a high school band play that.

L.D. Bell's band didn't perform, but some gymnasts/cheerleaders/acrobats from the school did. Pretty impressive, even from way up in the press box. It looked like Cirque de Blue Raider.

I'm not sure which one of those two performances is cooler. But either Wixon should get out more often, or DFW area bands should lighten up. Then again, maybe they're a bit concerned that some of the kids (what with their google and whatnot) will research the lyrics for the song.

UPDATE 2.0: Hebron comes back to beat Bell with 17 seconds left on the clock. Believe me when I tell you that I've never felt so sad for anything about Bell High School as I do today. I felt Hebron was the better team coming in, but like many of Bell's losses this season, this was another hard-fought game that they just failed to close out. The Rivalry could get tougher in upcoming years, though. Bell's star RB is but a sophomore. If he's any relation to the Farrows that went to Trinity back in my day, I'm more than a little fearful of the kid's gene pool. Nolan was a workhorse back in the 80s.

UPDATE 3.0: The only game that matters - 24-10 Trinity. Sounds like a sloppy win, as the score could have well been on the order of 35-10 w/ better execution. I'm doubtful we'll have the same luxury next week against Plano.

UPDATE 3.1: Whitmire's version of events now posted.

Benzion calls on State Board of Education member, Cynthia Dunbar (R-Crazystan), to apologize (see here and here for background; see here for the AP story, plus a hilarious photo of Dunbar).

...regardless of the intentions behind the calls for an apology, Ms. Dunbar was just as clearly in the wrong. We have watched this story for over a week, patiently waiting for Ms. Dunbar to realize that, issue the appropriate apology and move on.

We have been disappointed. Crazy, wild-eyed, idiotic, 911 Truther conspiracies like this are wrong no matter which side of the aisle you are on. Ms. Dunbar, we are asking you to do the right thing. Ultimately, we are one nation. Our battles should be limited to ideology and direction, not baseless personal attacks. Yes, you do have first amendment protection. But as an elected official, you also have a duty to your electorate, a duty which at times requires you to temper your first amendment freedom to make stupid statements.

Sure, it's after six paragraphs excoriating the Texas Freedom Network, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Associated Press ... but one step at a time, I realize. Kudos are in order for Benzion. First for making a rather reasonable point. Second for at least temporarily being a voice of sanity among Houston-area Republican bloggers. I mean ... damn, who had money on that ever happening?

SIDENOTE: Note the headlines over time ...

Nov. 3 - Education official refuses to retract Obama terror claim (AP)
Nov. 13 - Texas education official says her Obama comments were misconstrued

Dunbar actually riffs on one version of the AP headline (not the one used by Chron.com), claiming it misstated her opinion. As far as the original opinion she expressed ... the woman is still as nutty as ever. So why apologize? Let yer freak flag fly for two years, Cynthia. We'll see you at election time in two years.

SIDENOTE 2.0: Ya know, Dunbar was recruited by Terri Leo to run against the Republican incumbent for that seat in 2006 (who ironically was also recruited to run by Terri Leo in 2002). I got a buck for the first person who can tell me which reporter bothered to call Leo for a quote on the matter. Anyone? ... Anyone?

The answer, it would seem, would be not a single reporter. So much for the Efficient Liberal Media Theory.

No canvass report from Galveston yet, but here's Harris, Ft. Bend, Brazoria, and Montgomery results for Obama/McCain ...

From Texas 2008

A few sidenotes are in order:

* My map for Brazoria is probably an election cycle behind the times. The white boxes are for precincts that don't match up with current precinct numbering. I decided to include it only to get a sense of the suburban areas outside of Harris County. It more or less corresponds to the 2006 map of the county, so it's still worthwhile for review purposes.

* Montgomery County always looks daunting. I would argue that it's a function of a lack of candidates (cough*Run Everywhere*cough). There have been some challenges in State Rep districts and some names on the ballot for Congress, but none very well funded. This past cycle saw a challenge in HD18 and one for a Constable's race. No candidates whatsoever for countywide office. None. Not even a lawyer looking for name ID to run for a judicial slot. Until that changes, it's likely that the county will see Democratic performance stuck in the 20s while other suburban counties see their performance go upwards.

* There is one minor ray of hope in Montgomery County ... Pct. 1 (part of Willis). Rick Noriega got 45% there. Maybe with an ounce of effort, it'll join the more reliable Pct. 10 as one of two lonely blue dots in the county.I'm sure they could use a little company.

» Time: Is General Motors Worth Saving? (Bill Saporito)
» NYT: Bailout to Nowhere (David Brooks)
» Think Progress: Leverage (Matt Yglesias)
» Huffington Post: A Stimulus for the Long Run (Robert Shapiro, Simon Rosenberg)

A few items of interest here from the recent suggestion that American automakers are seeking a bailout. My own conflict on the issue is as follows: In principle, I disagree with the concept of a bailout. But there is also the point that if you don't make some (hopefully) intelligent effort to salvage what can be salvaged of the industry, you risk a far more expensive problem later on - wrecking the economies of at least three states and dealing with a potentially intransigent structural unemployment problem in the midwest.

The comparison to the airline industry has been made repeatedly ... as a consumer, I'm far more willing to fly on an airline in bankruptcy than I am to buy a car under warranty to a company in bankruptcy. My very first new, new car was an Oldsmobile Aurora. Not a bad car for the money, really. But it was the last year or so that Oldsmobile was ... well, Oldsmobile. Yeah, I could still take it into the shop and know that GM parts were GM parts. But it was notably more of a pain the more I drove the car into the ground (weekend roadtrips around the state were a bit too common).

As far as how to balance my two concerns, unfortunately, Yglesias makes about as good a point as I think there is. Any upside that might be suggested of the industry from a bailout strikes me as wishful thinking given the lobbying strength they tend to flex.

It's tempting to concern one's self with Yglesias' "zombie firm" point, but the underlying problems go beyond propping up a handful of industries with govt. cash. So it's perhaps not surprising that I tend to see more merit in my former summer boss, Robert Shapiro's notion of focusing on more structural investments that go toward avoiding a potential "zombie economy."

Though the bulk of the ideas in his & Rosenberg's post are a bit micro, there's a hint at the end about how connected health care is as an issue toward this problem. There's also a matter of retirement plans for large & old companies. I mean, is it really any surprise that the big issues that drive big companies to make costly decisions have less to do with what model of product to release as much as it does how much to fund the very entitlements that threaten to wreck the federal budget at the same time? There's a reason some of us were drawn to those issues in the 90s ... there's a reason why we still harp on them.

Looking forward, I should add that one of the better qualities I've seen in Obama had seemingly little to do with his views or leadership style. It had to do with his credit card debt. Zero. There's an ounce of hope that the frugality and fiscal responsibility that the guy holds for himself may also apply to how he manages the federal budget. At minimum, that'd be a change I'd like to see ... if not believe in.