Chicken

Commentary reported to jury service yesterday morning at the Harris County Jury Assembly Room. I drove to Moody Park, parked, hopped on the Red Line, got off on Preston and walked a couple of blocks.

The email said we would be required to wear a face covering while we were there. They had folks handing out masks as we arrived. I was already wearing a mask, but they told me I had to wear theirs. Mine had better protection, so I put theirs on over mine.

Once we got into an assembly room, several folks just slipped them off. Like a lot. I kept mine on. I don’t get it. There are deputy constables and security swarming all over the place and they can’t enforce mask wearing. What a joke. Sloppy on the part of the Harris County District Clerk’s operation.

I got there at 8 am and was dismissed at 10:30 am.

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I probably should stop talking about the Harris County Judge and the Harris County District Attorney, but I won’t. I am an observer and just know what I read, or folks tell me. I have to comment publicly because no one else is.

It looks like the County Judge and the District Attorney are playing a game of chicken and they are both going lose. Like lose their elected positions.

Here is what Judge Hidalgo said yesterday:

“I expect this political exercise to continue through Election Day. She’ll (District Attorney Kim Ogg) have me indicted. Or name a “special prosecutor”—an illusion of independence since those are still beholden to the DA. She did that before in a political prosecution that went nowhere. I’m not deterred.”

Sigh.  I wish it had not gotten to this.

If Judge Hidalgo is indicted before the election, it is going to be tough for her to get reelected this November.

If Judge Hidalgo were to lose in November, a lot of folks would be piss_d off at DA Ogg and I don’t see how she wins over Democrats in the 2024 Democratic Party primary.

I know these decisions should not be made based on politics, but I am not part of the decision-making process.  What I do know is how this will play out on the political playing field because that is what I know and do well.

Let me also say this. This will not be the first time in county government that a contract was steered in a certain direction by county officials from either political party.

Heck, the Chron a couple or so months ago, did a big piece on county pay-to-play and folks just yawned and went about their business. Nobody asked for an investigation and the pay-to-play was more politically salacious.  But hey, we are talking about professional service firms that are owned by dudes.

Commentary has said that Judge Hidalgo’s staff did some dumb stuff, and they should have been shown the door.

I don’t think we should be where we are at now. Just saying.

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Three days of early voting in person and Democrats in Harris County are not showing up compared to GOPers. 26,794 GOP, 10,993 Dems. Pitiful.

Charles Kuffner put this out today on the discrepancy in turnout numbers being posted by the Harris County Elections Administrator:

You may be wondering, as was Campos and as was I, what happened with the mail ballot totals? I called the Election Office to ask. The short answer is that they accidentally combined the Dem and GOP mail ballot totals in putting together the Monday report. They realized the error Tuesday morning, found where they had gone wrong, and fixed it for the Tuesday evening report. If you compare the numbers in the daily report to those in the unofficial ballot by mail report, the totals will match – I checked that on Wednesday before the Day Three report came out, and both it and the early voting roster numbers synched up. That’s all there was to it.

Sloppy. What else do you expect from those folks? If they pull something like this in November, all hell will break loose.

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We lost 2 of 3 at Fenway but still had a 6-3 roadie.  We are now home for 7 starting with a 4 games series this evening with the Rangers.