VOTE!

Early voting started in Texas yesterday, and will run through Oct. 31. I went and voted at 8 a.m. this morning. There were already 25-plus people lined up ahead of me, but fortunately things went quite smoothly and I was out of there within 15 minutes.

Seriously, this country owes a HUGE debt of gratitude to all those dedicated volunteers who work hard to ensure our democracy functions properly. They certainly have mine.

In case you folks are curious, I did indeed vote for Barak Obama for president and Rick Noriega for senator. And, lest you dismiss me as a mere straight-ticket voter, I'll have you know I went down the ballot and examined every race and ballot initiative. I did not vote for a Democrat in the District 21 representative race. Sadly, there wasn't one running against Lamar Smith, who--during a telephone town hall I listened in on last year--let one crazy lady rant on about putting alligators in the Rio Grande to eat any Mexicans that tried to swim across. Instead, I ticked the box for Libertarian challenger James Arthur Strohm. I don't agree with the whole Libertarian concept of "no government whatsoever," but after eight years of Bush and the Republicans bloating the Federal bureaucracy and blowing the budget all to hell, sending a bunch of Libertarians to Washington couldn't hurt.

Locally, my biggest disappointment was that loony Ken Valentine, who made such an ass of himself in recent years with his antics to try and close the Guadalupe and Comal rivers so he and his cronies could have a private waterfront that he got himself recalled off the New Braunfels City Council... well Ken's running for a spot on the Edwards Aquifer management board. Sadly, I'm not in his district so I couldn't vote against him. But I would if I could. Knowing his track record, he'll try and use his position to ban tubers from the rivers again. The jerk.

So, if you're an eligible voter in Texas, or anywhere else they have early voting for that matter, get out there and vote!

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