Don't Ask, Don't Tell

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

They had my back. 

too much info, dude.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Anise Parker won re-election in the country's 4th largest city despite the attacks on her sexuality.

inner city Houston voting patterns are NOT representative of Texas or the USA.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Anise Parker won re-election in the country's 4th largest city despite the attacks on her sexuality.

inner city Houston voting patterns are NOT representative of Texas or the USA.

It wasn't simply "inner-city Houston" that got to chose it's mayor, it's a city of 2+ million people (which would be the entire city, not one small section of it as you are implying)

are you forgetting I grew up in Houston, still work in Houston, and still live 40 miles NNW of it?  The last Democratic mayor (White) won reelection with 86 percent of the vote.  Parker received 50.8 percent and barely avoided a runoff.  The last time Houston voted for a GOP mayor was 1979!

so, again, the inner city of Houston is NOT representative of Texas or the USA

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

You keep referring to the city of Houston as "inner city Houston" for some reason.

those of us in the suburbs still consider ourselves Houstonians.  But unless you live in neighborhoods like River Oaks, Memorial, or newly annexed Kingwood, you're basically living in the ghetto if your address is Houston...and I should know because I am from a Houston ghetto.  (So is poster Sam Spade)

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The point of my post isn't that all these races individually are representative of the U.S., but is indicated of a greater national trend that using homosexuality as a political punching bag isn't going to work any more.  Even as recent as 2007 homosexuality was used successfully against Ed Oakley of Dallas and which saw Tom Leppert win.  Dallas is at least as Democratic as Houston.

It’s a sign Democrat portion of America has embraced homosexuality, not the GOP.  And since 1979, the Houston mayor’s race is basically a Democratic primary.

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Also you work in Houston but live 40 miles NNW of it?  Wow that must be a fun commute, hope you're having fun with those gas prices

That’s 40 miles as a crow flies. But, it’s about 50 miles in a car.  But a 50 mile commute in Houston is like a 10 mile commute in Boston.  I have I-45 or the Hardy to choose from if I’m going into downtown and I can make the trip in just under an hour.  And I’m getting 34MPG in my Fusion and my expenses and tools are tax deductable. Before I bought the Fusion under my company (I’m taking advanced depreciation so I can only deduct the actual cost of driving the car), I drove a paid off Corolla and put 30k miles a year on it and took the mileage deduction instead and therefore actually made money while driving to work.

I think Houston’s traffic ranking in the last couple of years has gotten worse as the recession has decreased traffic in a lot of other cities and Houston’s traffic has stayed about the same

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Edit:  Less than 500,000 people live inside the loop, there's over 2.1 million who live in Houston proper.  Unless you have a very liberal use of the phrase "inner city" there is no way the 500,000 inside 610 could out-vote the remaining 1.5+ million who reside in the city of Houston outside the loop

And in 2010, 44% of that 2.1 million were Hispanic, and another 23.7% were Black and only 25.6% were White.  So, like I said - if you live within the Houston city limits, you likely live in a ghetto (unless you live in rich neighborhoods like Memorial or River Oaks or newly annexed Kingwood).

That's not even close to being representative, which is why 1979 was the last time Houston voted for a GOP mayor and the last non-homosexual Democratic mayor won reelection with 86% of the vote.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

There's nothing wrong with being a suburbanite.

Whoever said there was?  But I don’t live inside the city limits of any city – although my mailing address is Magnolia, I live 10 miles outside its city limits.  And if someone from Boston asks me where I’m from, I’m not going to answer “Magnolia” because they wouldn’t know what that was.

If you enjoy nearly 50 miles each way all I got to say is to each his own.

Yes, and at the end of that 50 miles is a house that sits on 7 wooded acres with not another home north of it for literally miles and that house is home to 4 kids who go to decent public schools.  And we are 3-4 miles from a Kroger, a Home Depot, a Target, a Super Walmart, and many other stores…and 10 miles from The Woodlands Mall.

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 Although I'm glad you are enjoying your government subsidized tax deduction

Unlike in the former USSR, only corporate profits (revenues minus expenditures) get taxed in the US.  Of course, I don’t pay any corporate tax, because all profits go into my pocket in the form of a minimum salary and large quarterly bonuses (and I only pay income tax on those bonuses – bonuses are exempt from FICA and Medicare and all those other taxing leeches) so that my corp shows a profit of $0.00 at the end of each quarter.

Welcome to Capitalism 101.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Edit:  Less than 500,000 people live inside the loop, there's over 2.1 million who live in Houston proper.  Unless you have a very liberal use of the phrase "inner city" there is no way the 500,000 inside 610 could out-vote the remaining 1.5+ million who reside in the city of Houston outside the loop

And in 2010, 44% of that 2.1 million were Hispanic, and another 23.7% were Black and only 25.6% were White.  So, like I said - if you live within the Houston city limits, you likely live in a ghetto (unless you live in rich neighborhoods like Memorial or River Oaks or newly annexed Kingwood).

 
So much for the conservative talking point that minorities are socially conservative despite the fact they vote Democratic.  I always knew that spin would be smacked down soon enough by real election results otherwise Gene Locke would have won in 2009 against Annise Parker.

Thanks for providing evidence against that conservative talking point

whoever said I follow conservative talking points?  though 50.8% is a long way from 86%

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I would say Houston is the best representative of Houston.

Can’t argue with that logic.  A ghetto is, after all, representative of a ghetto.  Congratulations for winning over the bombed out inner portion of the Greater Houston area.

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Oh, and next time your in Houston, if you happen to want to find a bookstore, I recommend going to the suburbs or the rich white neighborhoods, cause in many Houston neighborhoods and malls most of the bookstores have closed their doors.  I noticed this trend in the early 90’s when I stopped by Gulfgate Mall (it used to be the nicest mall in Houston) wanting to buy a book (it used to have 3 bookstores) and after about 20 minutes I stopped by the info desk to ask them for directions to the bookstore and they looked at me as if I were from Mars as they informed me there was no bookstore in the mall.

Same goes for Greenspoint Mall, though they do have a T-Shirt shop where you can get a custom T-Shirt memorializing the latest member of your gang to be shot and killed. (no joke)

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

But don't pretend you live in the city of Houston and vote for the mayor there.

never said I voted for the mayor, at least not since April 1990 when I left the ghetto.

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I'm not criticizing your life style.  I currently live in a suburb.  Although I find it amusing you think being near a Wal Mart and Target is something to brag about

well, that Kroger/Home Depot/Walmart/Target/Petsmart respresents about 90% of our shopping, and it's all at the corner of FM1488 and FM2978, about 2-3 miles from our house.  Unless we're buying clothes, it's about all the stores we need.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I find it hilarious that you think Houston proper is a ghetto because it has a high minority population.  One bad t-shirt shop means nothing and it is pathetic you think that represents the whole city.

Dude, I lived within a mile of 610 within a mile of MLK until I was 22 years old, and I have three brothers and we live on the northwest side (Magnolia), the west side (Katy), the southwest side (Sugar Land), and the south east side (Hobby Airport)…I think I know the city a tad bit better than you do.



The only portion not a ghetto are parts of NW, W, and SW…with the entire N, E, S sides being poverty areas.

“Almost 80 percent of HISD (Houston Independent School District) students come from economically disadvantaged households”

80% economically disadvantaged sounds like a ghetto to me.


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Although the last time I was in the city a whopping 5 days ago I had no problem finding a few book store.   Along with the demise of Borders who had dramatically over priced products it is no wonder why there are fewer book stores.  Even Uptown Dallas lost it's book store when Borders went under and that is a very nice part urban Dallas

  And with the increased use of e-readers I suspect more traditional book stores will continue to go under.  Why use gas to drive to a book store when I can download a book onto a Kindle? 

As I said, I started noticing book stores closing down in the slums of Houston in the early 90’s – WAY before Kindle came along.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I don't feel like going back and forth on this issue anymore.  Clearly you think it is no big deal that Houston was the first major city in the United States to elect an openly homosexual mayor, whereas I do.

oh, as I have said for almost 10 years on this forum - we're headed for homosexuality being publically recognized just as it was in the days of Lot and Sodom.  But don't try to tell me Houston is politically representative of Texas or the USA, because it is clearly not.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Anise Parker won re-election in the country's 4th largest city despite the attacks on her sexuality.

inner city Houston voting patterns are NOT representative of Texas or the USA.

It wasn't simply "inner-city Houston" that got to chose it's mayor, it's a city of 2+ million people (which would be the entire city, not one small section of it as you are implying)

are you forgetting I grew up in Houston, still work in Houston, and still live 40 miles NNW of it?  The last Democratic mayor (White) won reelection with 86 percent of the vote.  Parker received 50.8 percent and barely avoided a runoff.  The last time Houston voted for a GOP mayor was 1979!

so, again, the inner city of Houston is NOT representative of Texas or the USA

Guess what the Dems haven't won the mayorship in Houston in my lifetime either...



You are one cagey SOB, jmfcst.  I'll give you that.

that was probably one of the dumbest posts ever presented on this forum for peer review.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

that was probably one of the dumbest posts ever presented on this forum for peer review.

Except for the fact he is correct.  FYI Dallas also elects it's mayors in non-partisan elections.

but that doesn't mean they're not Democrats or Republicans, it just means there is not a primary, so there can be 5 Dems along with 3 Republicans on the same ballot.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

It is amazing how despite having more Democrats to split the vote the GOP candidates based on your example the GOP still can't get win.

I have no idea how many Dems and Reps were on the ballot, I was simply giving an example - IIRC from my voting years in Houston's off year elections, the ballots probably didn't even list the party identity of the candidates...but if you would like to wager $100 that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least 2:1 in the City of Houston, then I'm sure we could find a neutral member of this forum to help transfer $100 from your pocket to my wallet.

I would be surprised it the ratio wasn't closer to 3:1 than 2:1....we are talking about a population that is 70% black or Hispanic and only 25% white and 80% economically disadvantaged.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Jmf saying it's because of the blacks and hispanics that Annise Parker got elected is hilarious.

dude, I never even hinted at such a thing, rather the racial breakdown discussion was showing how it wasn't representative of Texas or the USA.  Houston has a homosexual mayor because it is heavily Democratic, if Houston was evenly split between Dem and GOP voters, Parker would have gotten her head handed to her.

Here were the 2009 results:

Annise Parker (D) 54,193 31% 
Gene Locke    (D) 45,954 26% 
Peter Brown   (D) 39,904 22% 
Roy Morales   (R) 35,925 20%

and despite Link's idiotic claims, everyone and their dog knew Morales was the only Republican in the race and that the other candidates were Dems.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

What?!  The entire race is nonpartisan by LAW.  For someone that is an "expert" on Houston politics you have filled this thread with mistatements and flat out falsehoods.

so, because it is nonpartisan, you're claiming the candidates don't run as Democrats or Republicans?  As if Houstonians were shocked Mayor Bill White ran for Govenor as a Democrat in 2010?!

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I noticed this trend in the early 90’s when I stopped by Gulfgate Mall (it used to be the nicest mall in Houston) wanting to buy a book (it used to have 3 bookstores) and after about 20 minutes I stopped by the info desk to ask them for directions to the bookstore and they looked at me as if I were from Mars as they informed me there was no bookstore in the mall.

I'll try asking next time I'm in Texas.  Oh, wait, Gulfgate Mall was demolished a decade ago!

the early 90's was more than a decade ago, you know?

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So you couldn't find a bookstore in a dying mall... fascinating.  I love how you tried to turn that little nugget into a slur against two entire races of people.

the population in the neighborhoods around the mall was exploding, in fact they any built a new high school to relieve overcrowding at HISD’s most crowded high school, Milby.  And Milby was MY high school, and Gulfgate Mall used to be the pride of Houston and it was my mall, so I know the area well.

The fact is the mall closed because the surrounding neighborhood began to suck more and more, with high rates of crime.  The mall had 3 bookstores when I was in high school (1981-85), but when I stopped by in early 90’s, 90% of the stores were still open in the mall, but all 3 bookstores were gone.  The bookstores were among the first to close.

Even before ebooks, that’s what happened in neighborhoods where education was not a priority in the home – bookstores closed.  And with the high crime rates, entire malls closed.  Businesses shutdown.  People who could afford to got the heck out of Dodge and moved their families to safer neighborhoods.  And so the area became more and more economically depressed.

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People you have to be very careful when reading jmfcst's posts.  The lies and distortions are rampant.  You better pray a business trip took you through whatever city he is slandering the minorities in or you better be damn good with the google machine, because this SOB is as cagey as they come.  I've just exposed the stuff that didn't jibe with faint memories I have of Houston.  Lord knows what else is a gross distortion.

Yep, better be careful of jmfcst.  Very careful.  When he says “early 90’s”, he means more than a decade ago.  Tricky he is.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Link, there are many officially non-partisan elections all over the country in which the actual affiliation of the candidates is generally well-known.  Houston is one example.  Chicago and Las Vegas are two more.  Even the famously non-partisan Nebraska Legislature currently has an unofficial composition of 34 Republicans and 15 Democrats.

Do NOT ruin this for me.

Seriously though I have never heard of party politics playing a big roll in Houston Municipal politics.

that's because the city is overwhelmingly Democratic, Einstein.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

but if you would like to wager $100 that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least 2:1 in the City of Houston, then I'm sure we could find a neutral member of this forum to help transfer $100 from your pocket to my wallet.

Take that guy's money, TXMichael.  He has no idea what he is talking about.

You are going to have to transfer the $100 to TXMichael, jmfcst.  Voters don't register by party in Texas!

I know you don't live in Houston.  Do you even live in Texas?  This is getting embarrassing.

 people don't have to be "officially" register as Dems or Reps to know the party identification of a population.  Go and look at the Harris County (which is even more Republican than Houston) primary results and it's easy to tell Dems outnumber Reps by at least 2:1 (maybe even 5:1) in Houston.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Malls don't just go from bustling centers of urbane cosmopolitain chic to demolished overnight.  They go through a slow state of decay called the "dead mall" phase.  You apparently went looking for books in a "dead mall" and were surprised there weren't any.  After which you chalked it up to various "darkies" and have been telling your tale ever since.

I am well aware of the fact the neighborhood had been experiencing white flight for over a decade (which is why my neighborhood was >95% black), even though the population was increasing.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Don't let the non-partisan election thing fool you - the competitive mayoral races in Houston almost always end up between a Republican (usually a moderate one) and a Democrat

no, no, no.  You have to listen to Link here Sam.  No one knew Whitmire was a Dem when she defeated Republican McConn in '81, Houstonians were completely in the dark.

and even though both you and I grew up on Houston's east end, and even though you and I have probably been to Gulfgate Mall over a hundred times...Link knows the area and the mall better than we do.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

the blacks were such animals in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s in Houston, that I understand your feelings on the matter.

as we discussed some time ago, it wasn't the black neighborhoods I was scared of, rather it was the Mexican neighborhoods around Austin high school.  From my experience, blacks didn't go around looking for a fight and had respect for their own lives, so walking down a black neighborhood was pretty much a trivial matter for me.  But around Canal street and 59th and all those alphabetical avenues (e.g. Ave E), I would see Hispanic punks standing on the street corners sniffing paint out of a Coke cans and looking for someone to stab just for the fun of it.  

And it wasn't like I wasn't familiar with Mexican neighborhoods - I went to Park Place Elem and then to Deady Jr High and then to Milby, so I was very familiar with the neighborhood.  (I was actually zoned to Jones High School, but used a friend of the family's address to get into ParkPlace/Deady/Milby) But I saw some really bad things go down for no apparent reason around that neighborhood, esp Mason Park.

I was pretty much a punk myself, but I hated fighting.  esp senseless fighting.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I didn't notice Sam saying anything about Gulfgate Mall.  You're on your own there buddy.

… Sam Spade, your thoughts?
 

I think Sam’s opinion of your knowledge of Houston can speak for itself.

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jmfcst, I was being charitable when I accused you of not being from Houston.  I just assumed that if you were as old as you claim you are and a political expert you would at least know how voter registration works in your state.

...but if you would like to wager $100 that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least 2:1 in the City of Houston, then I'm sure we could find a neutral member of this forum to help transfer $100 from your pocket to my wallet.

You know we are never going to settle the nuances of the degree of partisan politics in the nonpartisan Houston Mayoral contests.  But one thing we can all agree on is anyone that doesn't know there are no registered Democratic or Republican voters in Houston either isn't from Texas or is very clueless.

Dude, even though no one is officially registered as a Dem or Rep voter, we still loosely use the term “registered Dem” or “registered Rep”, but we use it to mean a Democrat or Republican that is registered to vote.  

You’re basically “unofficially” considered a Dem or Rep when you vote in either primary and have your voter’s id card stamped “voted in Dem (or Rep) Primary”…cause trust me, if someone ran for office under the GOP banner but had voted in the last Dem primary, they wouldnt be considered a member of the GOP.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

At least Sam knows how to conduct a flame war.  No pussyfooting around with paragraph long posts about how much nicer their car is or how retarded someone may be- just straight napalm.  

as I have said before:  

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Sam Spade and KEmperor can both accept idiocy and simply walk away.  I can't.

And, trust me, I wasn't bragging about my base model Ford Fusion.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I see the "Liberals care to respond" thread has been locked.  I thought it was a useful multi flame war thread where the majority was engaged in his own war with only vague knowledge of the other wars going on around him.

it wasn't a productive thread, but it was a useful thread...it helps clear out the bad blood that builds from time to time.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

And, trust me, I wasn't bragging about my base model Ford Fusion.

No, I was not thinking of your Ford Fusion rather Wonkish's brag about his Escalade and high profile job which was likely spurred by the forum chorus calling him a retard.

ah, got it now.  thought you were refering to my explanation to TXMichael for living a 50 mile commute from Houston.