The Daily Hurricane

After Wednesday night's debate debacle Arizona Governor Jan Brewer-Angle-Palin has decided she's not going to make that mistake again. She's taking her message to the people of Arizona "in a different venue" (presumably one where they don't ask questions, or only ask the ones Brewer wants to answer). Besides, she only did the first one for the money. From the Arizona Daily Star: "Incumbent Republican Jan Brewer said Thursday she has no intention of participating in...

I remember sitting in political science classes as a freshman and sophmore at TCU. It was then that I learned the most interesting and powerful fact in politics. Young people don't vote. This shocked me. I remember filling out my first vote for Bill Clinton as a high school senior. I grew up in a political household. My dad was a political science major and history teacher as well. It just seemed natural. Furthermore, I...

I'll follow, but only at a distance.Tug pulling cargo earlier this summer in Tacoma, Washington. ...

Idiocracy is here:<br />Tbogg nailed it:"If the terrorists are smart, they will give up on trying to attack us and just sit back and wait, because eventually our entire country is going to be so stupid that people will start sticking their tongues in wall sockets just to see what electricity tastes like."...

Watch as Arizona Governor Jan Brewer kind of .......uhhh, loses her place in her opening statement during last night's debate with Democratic challenger Terry Goddard:  But it got even weirder. During the debate Goddard asked Brewer to retract her ridiculous statement about the alleged beheadings in the Arizona desert. Brewer evaded the question. Afterwards, several reporters posed the same question to Governor Brewer. First she gave a non-answer, then did her best Sharron Angle impersonation and...

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) on the GOP's "first move" should they gain the majority in the mid-terms: "House Republicans' first move in the majority would be to extend tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) suggested Wednesday evening.  Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said that House Republicans would look to extend the tax cuts they helped President George W. Bush pass in 2001...

UPDATED:  At 9 am CDT, a fire on the platform at South Vermilion Block 380 was reported.  The production platform, owned and operated by Mariner Energy, is reported standing in about 340 feet of water.  Mariner is in the process of merging into Apache Corp.  At the time of the fire, there were 13 workers on the platform, all are accounted for and in the water in exposure suits.  Current reports are that it was...

Here is a posting offered up two nights ago by Harris County, Texas Judge Executive Ed Emmett on his campaign related Facebook page----"Early voting starts in just 9 weeks. Bev Kaufman, our County Clerk, and her staff are doing a great job responding to the disaster of losing our voting machines in a fire. Too bad some folks are trying to play politics with the situation." (I added the link for this blog post.)Here is the reply...

How did we get here? Given that Republican policies and practices led us to the brink of another Great Depression less than 2 years ago, how did we get to a world where the GOP polls ahead in every category dealing with the economy?How did Democrats go from a clear mandate for change, as evidenced by voters giving them the White House and once-in-a-generation majorities in both Houses of Congress, to the increasingly real prospect...

I promise this isn't about sports, but sports was the impetus for this diatribe. I was discussing the Roger Clemens situation with other people online when the discussion disintegrated into a political discussion about the merits of Congress. I won't bore you with the facts of the case, so I'll boil it down to its simplest ingredients. Roger Clemens allegedly lied to Congress, so Congress has charged him with perjury. He was formally indicted and...

But we can't raise their taxes, they're the job creators: "The Institute for Policy Studies  released its annual report on executive compensation today... [T]he report found that "CEOs of the 50 firms that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home nearly $12 million on average in 2009." Those CEOs' combined compensation totaled $598 million, while at the same time, their companies eliminated 531,363 jobs despite reporting a...

If President Obama's speech last night was a movie I'd give it 2 ½ stars, Not a bomb, but not an Oscar winner either.  It was sort of significant, but not exactly an "historic moment," in my opinion. More like a baby step. An historic moment will be when the last American soldier leaves Iraq. And while it may be called "an end to our combat mission in Iraq" the facts are we still have...

I got a safety inspection and emissions check today. The State of Texas mandates that cars get a safety inspection and that cars in high pollution counties get an emissions test.Government has the right to mandate people to do things in order to serve the public good. Government has that right even in Texas.Liberals and progressives should not be hesitant to assert this fact.A few fearful people will tell you that stuff like this starts...

The gubnatorial race in Texas is getting a lot of attention as it should, but I wanted to put in a simple plug to pay attention to the races in our state legislature. This site gets out to a lot of folks in a lot of places, so I don't want to talk specifics. Each of you might have a different person representing you in Austin. I don't want to be a shill for Democrats...

How any Texan can even consider voting for this clown for governor--again--is beyond me. Of course, now that we don't have any voting machines in Harris County (how convenient) it could make his re-election a bit easier. First he takes stimulus money allocated for education, cuts the education budget by the same amount, and puts the stimulus money in the state's "Rainy Day Fund." So to prevent that from happening again, Congressman Lloyd Doggett added...

Since it falls under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment, I won't subject anyone to the video of Sean Hannity interviewing Sarah Palin yesterday. For the masochistic, News Hounds has it. But here's some of what Palin said in response to President Obama telling NBC's Brian Williams that there is a "network of misinformation" which keeps alive non-news like his birth certificate and his religion. "I was pretty appalled at that notion that Brian...

As W. C. Fields once said, "It was a woman who drove me to drink and I never even had the courtesy to thank her for it." And according to this latest study showing that abstainers have higher mortality rates than either heavy or moderate drinkers,  I owe additional thanks for a few extra years of life. "...the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found...

Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally this weekend showed the true power and magnitude of Beck and his message. The supposed noble goal: Restoring honor, taking back the civil rights movement, and to pay tribute to America's military personnel and others "who embody our nation's founding principles of integrity, truth and honor." While most attention has been paid to the bold goal of taking the civil rights movement back, it's the 'restoring honor' part I'd...

As we have seen over the past couple of years, prejudice and racism is on the rise. Xenophobia seems to be growing. All of it is threatening to come to a head. However, as I was reading Charles Krauthhammer's column on Sunday, while I usually disagree vehemently with him and did this time, I noticed again what we are dealing with. The GOP, conservative movement, Fox news, and whoever else they claim in their tent...

Rival press conferences were held last Friday in Downtown Houston as details continue to emerge about what appears to be a campaign of suppression and intimidation against poor and minority voters by conservatives in Houston and Harris County, Texas.One press conference was held by the non-partisan voter registration group Houston Votes, while the other was conducted by a right-wing group called the Liberty Institute and a local tea party outfit. I attended both events.(Above--Houston Votes...