1.  “… [A]sk not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country!” ~ John F Kennedy, Inaugural speech, January 20, 1961
2. The Secrecy Voting Envelope: https://www.youtube.com/embed/oxaXleNeQKA
3. According to current court rulings, there will be NO straight-ticket voting in this election.
4. The next election is the General Election on November 3^rd, 2020
   1. VOTING FAQ – In Texas, Early Voting Starts October 13-thru-30!
   2. VOTETEXAS.GOV – Texas Voter Information
   3. Last Day to Apply for Ballot by Mail (Received, not Postmarked): October 23, 2020
   4. VOTING BY MAIL: INSTRUCTIONS
   5. HARRISVOTES.COM­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
      1. DRIVE-THRU and 24-HOUR VOTING will be available at some early voting sites. More info at HARRISVOTES.COM!
   6. Make sure you are registered to vote!
   7. On the possibility that the courts make you eligible to vote by mail on Election Day due to the Covid-19 virus, make sure that you are ready with an application to mail in. These are available from HARRISVOTES.COM­.  Follow directions carefully.
   8. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, consider visiting VOTE.ORG. Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
   9. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
   10. HARRISVOTES.COM – Countywide Voting Centers
       1. HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
          1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
          2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
          3. Current utility bill
          4. Bank statement
          5. Government check
          6. Paycheck
          7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
   11. You may vote early by-mail if:
       1.  You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
       2. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
       3. Sick or disabled;
       4. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
       5. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
       6. Make sure you are registered:
   12. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
       1. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
          1. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
          2. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
5. Houston ISD updates: District prepares for 41% in-person enrollment; board adopts tax rate, budget amendment; By Matt Dulin | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 6:40 AM Oct 9, 2020 CDT
   1. 41% of HISD parents opt for in-person enrollment – Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan told trustees that the district is preparing for at least 59% of its students to return to in-person instruction, with 41% of parents opting to continue virtual learning. The district is providing campuses with personal protective equipment, cleaning materials, plexiglass dividers and other supplies to implement practices to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
   2. HISD approves tax rate, budget amendment – The board also approved a slightly lower tax rate, $1.1331 per $100 valuation, for fiscal year 2020-21. A budget amendment of $41 million was also approved, allocating funds toward COVID-19 supplies and $17 million in new special education initiatives.
6. ‘Not just politics’: How the 2020 campaign is dividing Houston’s booming suburbs – As Democrats gain ground in suburban communities, Trump warns of crime and destruction. Neighborhoods like Prestonwood Forest are caught in the middle; By Mike Hixenbaugh | NBCNEWS.COM | Oct. 9, 2020, 3:35 AM CDT
   1. This summer, Whitney Hanzik got a startling notification on her phone. There’d been a stabbing near her home, and one person was injured. Then she looked outside and noticed a helicopter flying over her suburban Houston neighborhood. Hanzik… wanted to know whether a dangerous person was on the loose. So she logged on to the Prestonwood Forest Neighbors & Friends Facebook group. …
   2. One longtime resident, an older white woman, complained [online] that it was yet more evidence that the area surrounding Prestonwood, a subdivision developed in the 1970s, was turning into “the ‘hood,” according to several residents who read the now-deleted comment. … Fifty-three comments later, Hanzik scrolled through the replies, stunned.
   3. [It] wasn’t the first time this year — or the last — that Prestonwood Forest’s community Facebook group has unraveled into a heated argument over crime, politics and race. And the incident was by no means unique to this one Texas subdivision.
   4. Similar feuds have blown up in suburban communities across the country in recent months, fueled in part by changing demographics, the nation’s ongoing reckoning over racial injustice, an unusually contentious election season and Republican leaders who’ve been stoking unsubstantiated fears about growing lawlessness in the suburbs. …
   5. Texas GOP Chairman Allen West, a former Florida congressman, confirmed in an interview that fears about crime are central to his party’s strategy in the fast-growing suburbs around Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. …
   6. But in interviews with several Prestonwood Forest residents, none listed crime and safety as their top concern. These voters said they were more worried about health care, the economy and the fight over confirming a new Supreme Court justice. …
   7. This summer, after campaign signs started popping up in neighbors’ yards, word spread that some Trump signs had disappeared. A couple of residents alleged foul play by their left-leaning neighbors, sparking another fight on the neighborhood Facebook group.
   8. In the same subdivision where neighbors work together every winter to coordinate holiday decorations, many now feel they’ve got to choose a side.
   9. “Personally I think this is all because of the Democrats,” Swisher said. “It’s been nothing but trying to get Trump for the past four years. There’s no thought about what issues need to be addressed. It’s just ‘get rid of this guy.’ So it becomes the name-calling and personal.” …
   10. Tony and Ayo Jones, a Black couple, moved to Prestonwood Forest with two young children in the summer of 2017 after falling in love with their new home’s floor plan and convenient location.
   11. They’d barely gotten settled when, two months later, Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on the neighborhood, causing the worst flooding in its history. Tony and Ayo sheltered in the attic with their children as water began rising inside their house. Once it was almost knee-deep on the first floor, they decided they needed to evacuate.
   12. It was 11 p.m. and pouring rain as they waded into the darkened neighborhood with their kids, 2 and 8 at the time, joined by Ayo’s father and Tony’s brother, who’d come to shelter with them. Tony, 50, pushed the 8-year-old and Ayo’s elderly father on an air mattress through waist-deep water. Ayo, 44, carried her toddler on her back, trying to shield him from the rain.
   13. They walked until they reached the first house on higher ground. But when Tony rang the doorbell, he noticed someone peek out a window and then quickly turn off the lights.
   14. “I was like, shoot,” Ayo said. “It’s because they saw two ‘big Black guys’ standing at the door.”
   15. At the next house, Tony and his brother stayed back at the street and let Ayo do the knocking. This time a young white couple answered, but they said they couldn’t help. Ayo pleaded with them to at least let her family shelter in their garage to get out of the rain long enough to figure out a plan. The couple shook their heads and closed the door, Ayo said.
   16. Finally, at the third house, an elderly white man answered. He and his wife quickly invited them inside and made hot cocoa for the kids. They put fresh sheets on their guest bed and told the Joneses they could stay with them as long as they needed.
   17. That story came to symbolize the duality of their life in Prestonwood Forest, Ayo said. It’s the kind of community where some neighbors will generously welcome strangers off the street, regardless of race, and treat them like family. …
7. Chevron to layoff 700 employees in Houston downtown; By Tierra Smith, Digital Producer | click2houston.com | Published: October 9, 2020, 8:02
   1. Chevron Corp. is asking employees to reapply for positions as part of a “cost-cutting program expected to eliminate up to 15% of its workforce,” according to Reuters.
   2. Nearly 700 employees in Houston will be laid off starting Oct. 23, according to a notice Chevron sent to the state of Texas. The layoffs will affect workers at Chevron’s downtown offices: 1400 Smith, 1500 Louisiana, 1600 Smith and 2 Allen Center, according to the Houston Chronicle. …
   3. As the No. 2 U.S. oil producer, Chevron has undergone changes to reduce costs and recover declining profits in response to the economic downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic that derailed the industry. Stay-at-home orders and a cutback of travel caused the demand for fuel to drop drastically and lowered the cost of gas nationwide.
   4. Likewise, global energy companies are taking similar steps.
   5. Shell revealed plans to lay off 9,000 workers over the next two years. While BP announced plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs globally by the end of the year. Exxon says its reviewing its layoffs by a county-by-country basis.
8. PANDEMIC NEWS: Microsoft’s work-from-home hybrid model concerns Redmond [WA] businesses – Redmond-based Microsoft is adopting a hybrid model for employees to work remotely, which worries some Redmond shops and restaurants who rely on their business; By Kalie Greenberg | KING5.COM | Published: 7:04 PM PDT October 9, 2020
   1. Redmond-based Microsoft sent an email to employees that the company will be adapting to a hybrid model that will allow for more flexibility to work from home. 
   2. The hybrid model will allow some employees to work from home permanently, others will be able to relocate and some will return to Microsoft worksites. …
   3. But news of this hybrid model was not the news Redmond restaurants and shops around the once-bustling campus wanted to hear.
   4. “The streets are empty. It’s very quiet. It’s like a ghost town,” said Terrence Em, owner of SHABURINA, a hotpot restaurant in walking distance from the Microsoft campus. 
   5. Businesses in the area are already struggling due to the coronavirus pandemic. Em said most of the restaurant’s lunch traffic is made-up of Microsoft employees. 
   6. “If they’re staying at home, that’s going to devastate us,” said Em. “Not just for us, but the hotels and restaurants nearby that have a lot of customers come over from Microsoft.”
9. MIKE: 2020 is a CENSUS year. That means that the State governments we have in place in 2021 will draw the Congressional districts that can determine party political power for the next decade.
10. How down-ballot candidates could help Democrats flip Texas – The fate of the presidential race in Texas could be tied to dozens of legislative and congressional races in the state’s suburbs. Those seats have often gone to Republicans. But Democratic candidates are raising and spending big. by Abby Livingston | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Oct. 8, 2020 Updated: 6 hours ago
    1. … Texas remained the country’s largest red state in 2018. Republicans have won every statewide race in Texas since 1998, and a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won Texas since Jimmy Carter in 1976. But for 18 months, statewide polls showed 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is outperforming past nominees’ margins in Texas. And a question that often elicits eyerolls is now a point of serious debate: Can Democrats flip Texas?
    2. The battle for the state’s 38 electoral votes won’t come down to a savior candidate or some supersonic smart national strategist.
    3. Instead, the fate of Texas in November could rest on the backs of dozens of mostly obscure Democratic candidates who are competing for legislative and congressional seats in the suburbs that have been strongly Republican.
    4. “If Biden wins on election night in Texas, the first time since 1976, the credit will really be due to these candidates — most of them who by the way are women, women of color and Black women of color in particular,” [Beto] O’Rourke said. …
    5. “We have been through hell and back in the past decade, but all the while focused on building the infrastructure at the Texas Democratic Party necessary to meet this very moment,” said Manny Garcia, the executive director of the Texas Democratic Party.
    6. That strategy has continued in 2020, where Democrats have a chance of flipping the state House and winning more congressional seats.A slew of candidates are running in and around all of Texas’ big cities, in seats that were never intended to be competitive when the Republican-controlled Texas Legislatureredrew congressional and legislative districts in 2012.
    7. But in those eight years, millions of people moved to Texas; and Republicans have witnessed a collapse amongcollege-educated voters and increasingly diversifying suburbs. …
    8. “Normally, House and down-ballot candidates are desperate for presidential investment,” said Amy Walter, a political analyst at the Cook Political Report. “In this case, I think that all the money being poured into suburban [congressional districts] and battleground state [legislative] districts could help boost Biden.”
    9. Not so fast, Republicans say – Despite the Democratic optimism in Texas, Republicans say they are confident that the state will remain in the red column and that they could win back some of the House and congressional seats they lost in 2018. …
    10. And Republicans also say that you can’t make clear connections between down-ballot races and the presidential campaign. …
    11. One clear thing is that Democrats are investing big money in Texas campaigns through national and local fundraising. Some Democratic candidates are able to spend heavily on TV ads and their own get-out-the-vote campaigns. …
    12. Amid all of this activity is the once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic. At the end of the day, no one in Texas or beyond has a real grasp on who turns out to vote this year. But most political observers agree that Democrats have momentum and are on track to make gains. The key question is how big of a step they’ll take?
    13. “We don’t know quite yet if this is a full-on suburban realignment, or if these voters are just temporarily parking themselves with Democrats until Trump is no longer in office,” Walter, the Cook Political report analyst, wrote in an email to the Tribune.
    14. “I think the first big challenge for these Democrats will be the 2022 mid-terms,” she added. “If Biden is president and Democrats have control of Congress, what kind of priorities will they push? Will Democrats over-reach and alienate the suburban Houston, Dallas and San Antonio voters they won over in 2018-2020?”
11. Volunteer lawyers will advise military personnel who question the legality of orders during protests, election disputes; By Shane Harris | WASHINGTONPOST.COM  | Oct. 9, 2020 at 5:42 p.m. CDT
    1. A group of lawyers is offering advice to military and National Guard members who worry they may be given unlawful orders if deployed during protests or disputes over next month’s elections.
    2. The Orders Project was formed in response to the use of force against protesters this summer in Lafayette Square, two of the founders said in an interview Friday. ,,,
    3. The legal group anticipates that military personnel might find themselves in the same position this fall, and they may question whether orders they receive are legal.
    4. Some of the scenarios the lawyers have imagined are rooted in recent history with this year’s protests. But President Trump has also raised the prospect of unprecedented legal challenges. For instance, the lawyers say he could federalize the National Guard and order members to seize disputed ballots. Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that mail-in ballots, expected to be cast in historic numbers, are rife with fraud and could imperil his reelection chances.
    5. “Military personnel don’t have to follow an unlawful order, but they take a risk when deciding not to,” said Eugene R. Fidell, one of the country’s leading experts on military law and an Orders Project co-founder.
    6. Fidell advised concerned personnel to consult first with lawyers in their chain of command and to seek out the group as a kind of backup, if they want another opinion. The volunteer attorneys are all experts on the Uniform Code of Military Justice and will consult with service members on a case-by-case basis. …
    7. Not only are service members not required to follow illegal orders, they are required not to obey “flagrantly unlawful” ones, said Michel Paradis, a professor of military law at Columbia Law School, who is not involved in the Orders Project.
    8. But in reality, those who refuse take enormous risks.
    9. Military law “makes disobedience to an order itself a criminal offense,” Paradis said. He explained that disputes are typically settled informally within the chain of command. Military lawyers can also help resolve disagreements. In more extreme cases, a service member who believes an order is unlawful can report the matter to an inspector general.
    10. But those who choose to go outside those traditional processes will find little guidance. …
    11. Fidell said this summer’s protests, as well as the president’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose, have convinced the group that military personnel could use extra counsel.
    12. Soldiers might be given orders to open fire at protesters, Fidell said, recalling the killing of four unarmed Kent State University students by Ohio National Guard members during a Vietnam War protest in 1970. And unprecedented legal questions could arise if the election is still in dispute come Inauguration Day but Trump continues to give orders to the military.
    13. “We hope they’ll never happen,” Fidell said of such nightmare scenarios. “But it’s unrealistic to think these are out of the question.”
12. What Moral Philosophy Tells Us About Our Reactions to Trump’s Illness – The impulse to wish harm on others may come naturally, but that doesn’t make it right; By Sasha Mudd | NYTIMES.COM | Oct. 9, 2020
    1. The other day, [the author’s] 7-year-old, having gotten wind of President Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis, asked me point blank, “Mommy, are you glad that Trump got the coronavirus?”
    2. [The author is] a moral philosopher, and yet … had a hard time coming up with an answer. The question demands we grapple not only with the moral meaning of the president’s illness but also with our complex and contested reactions to it. …
    3. While the [author agrees] that the gloating over Mr. Trump’s illness is morally concerning, [the author] also find[s] it fair to ask whether certain less celebratory but still positive reactions to his disease are entirely blameworthy and without moral merit. …
    4. Ambivalent reactions to President Trump’s medical condition become more understandable when we appreciate that valid moral principles are often in tension with one another and can pull us in different directions. Condemning the pleasure that his misfortune has produced is certainly correct from one moral perspective, but there are also valid moral reasons to regard his illness as a potentially positive thing. Judging the moral meaning of Mr. Trump’s bout with Covid-19 — and our reactions to it — is no easy task. …
    5. [W]hile it is true that life is sacred, and we must honor the dignity of all persons, including Mr. Trump, society also has a legitimate moral interest in seeing wrongdoers face consequences for their actions. The sense that justice requires punishment for wrongs runs deep and is not the same as a mere thirst for revenge or a desire to get even.
    6. On the contrary, punishment plays an important role in any healthy moral ecosystem. When the moral order has been ruptured, punishment for wrongs helps to repair tears to the social fabric and to reinforce the validity of the moral expectations that were violated. …
    7. So where does this leave us?
    8. Can those who rejoice in Mr. Trump’s misfortune claim the moral high ground? Not so fast. Those who regard Mr. Trump as the enemy may simply wish to see him suffer. Such a wish may be entirely untethered from concerns about justice or the consequentialist moral appeal of a world where he is too ill to campaign effectively. For these reasons we are right to be skeptical of their reaction. Moreover, the principle of human dignity tells us that even the president, for all the wrong he has done, deserves our good will. …
    9. Here’s how [the author] explained the moral quandary to [her] 7-year-old: I am sad that Mr. Trump got sick because in general suffering is bad, and I don’t want anyone to suffer, but on the other hand I think he should suffer consequences for the harm he has done. This answer seemed satisfying enough at the time, but it left out an important distinction.
    10. What [the author] did not try to explain is that the punishment that Mr. Trump’s bout of Covid-19 represents is merely symbolic, a stand-in for the real punishment he deserves, which is necessarily social in character. Mr. Trump deserves to be punished at the ballot box and to be held accountable for any possible criminal wrongdoing in a court of law.

[The author hopes] that after experiencing firsthand the illness that has killed so many people and devastated the lives of so many others, the president will think better of his cavalier attitude. It seems, so far, that he hasn’t. Nevertheless, [the author hopes] Mr. Trump returns to good health. I hope this both because Donald Trump is a human being with dignity, and also because the world needs this president to get his real just deserts.