Free Republic

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner can be thankful that he has the magic "D" by his name. Had he been a Trump supporting Republican, he would have already been crucified in the mainstream media for urging that residents of Houston, Texas not evacuate even though there was already a high risk of severe flooding from Hurricane Harvey at the time he made his faulty recommendation. As a result, the MSM has so far been mostly very circumspect reporting about his non-evacuation order beginning with his Friday tweet:

Despite repeated attempts, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has reported that he has been unable to reach Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. Abbott has called Turner's cell phone "several times" to offer aid and whatever he may need in this time of crisis.

The Huffington Post published a story by Amanda Terkel which purportedly showed that the daughter  of the lesbian mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, was denied a driver's license because she has two moms. The story included a tweet from the mayor claiming this as the cause for denial. Unfortunately for the mayor, an update to the story proved her to have been lying about this incident. First let us look at the initial Huffington Post article in which the daughter of the mayor was supposedly subjected to discrimination due to having two moms:

Burglars took two computers and other equipment during a break-in at an early voting station in northeast Houston, but appeared to have left electronic voting machines untouched, Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman said Monday. A skeptic of voting machine security said the break-in underscores how vulnerable the county's electronic ballots are to tampering. “It's very easy to do this in a surreptitious fashion. No tooling required, no screwdrivers, nothing fancy,” said Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice University who was hired by the state of California to study the same Hart Intercivic machines used by Harris County. “If...

If you watched the debates or look at the candidate’s websites, you will never see the dreaded “D” word spoken nor spelled out. You know why, and so do these wily candidates. The “D” word conjures up images of Pelosi, Reid and billions of dollars flying out of your collective pockets and into the hands of millionaire bankers and insurance executives. Some will tell you that no one mentions the “D” word because the Houston Mayoral Race is a non-partisan race. Really? You sure you want to go with that one? According to the letter of the law, the race...

For the past year, wealthy attorney and former Kemah Mayor Bill King has been anything but coy about the fact that he planned to run for Houston's top job next year, when term limits bar Mayor Bill White from seeking a fourth term. King's plan: To position himself as the center-right business leader in a field expected to include Houston Controller and former Councilwoman Annise Parker and current Councilman Peter Brown, an architect pushing "new urbanism" development policies. Brown has been presenting himself as a problem solver, heading a task force on hurricane evacuation and publishing essays proposing new directions...

Send in the Election Clowns Don't worry, they're here BY TIM FLECK tim.fleck@houstonpress.com What a difference a couple of years make. In the Houston Press Best of Houston issue in 2001, Houston's District H councilman Gabe Vasquez received Best Politician honors. Last week, he missed the runoff in the race for city controller after earlier deciding not to seek re-election to his City Council seat. Come January, Vasquez will be busted back to private citizenship. In an informal Insider poll of the biggest blunders of the 2003 local election, media members and politicos named Vasquez's ballot switcheroo as No. 1....

Oct. 4, 2003, 1:34AM Scheme to confuse voters in mayor's race is thwarted By JOHN WILLIAMS Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle Political Writer An aborted scheme to dilute support for a major candidate by putting another man with the same name on the Nov. 4 ballot has touched two campaigns and is roiling the rhetoric in Houston's mayoral race. It is a bizarre tale that includes a Democratic U.S. congressman, a secret tape recording, a $5,000 campaign check and a floppy straw hat sold for $1,200. And it is a tale that raises as many questions as it answers. At the...

In Search of Bogus Bill How a would-be dirty trick became campaign comedy BY TIM FLECK Even by Houston's offbeat political standards, it was a very strange meeting indeed. In Internet whistle-blower Brenda Flores's humble Spring Branch-area bungalow sat an unlikely confab of political power: Congressman Chris Bell, mayoral candidate and millionaire executive William H. "Bill" White and Metro board member Janie Reyes. They had come calling on a Sunday afternoon, the day before the municipal election filing deadline, to implore Flores not to follow through on her confessed scheme to recruit another Bill White to run for mayor. In...