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November 25th, 2017:

Saturday video break: So Far Away

Here’s Carole King performing one of her many hits from Tapestry:

I’m always entertained to see James Taylor with long hair, because by the 80s he had become such a short-haired clean-cut type. According to the comments on this video, the show at which this was recorded was before Tapestry was released; Carole King opened for James Taylor, then joined his band for his set. That would have been a fine show. Now here’s Dire Straits:

Man, Brothers In Arms was a great album. I feel like it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Thinking about it, I don’t believe I ever had the chance to see Dire Straits live. I can’t recall a time when they were on tour and played a gig where I was living. If that ever changes, I will be sure to do something about it.

Harris County to consider floodplain regulations change

Seems like a good idea to me.

Nearly three months after Hurricane Harvey, Harris County is proposing using 500-year floodplains instead of 100-year floodplains for new development, the first significant overhaul of county elevation requirements in nearly two decades.

The regulations, which still must be approved by Commissioners Court, would force developers to build new homes eight feet higher than previously required in some flood-prone areas.

They would also, for the first time, open up a broader geographic area to regulation by forcing developers building in 500-year floodplains to meet stricter elevation standards. Currently, there is little regulation outside the 100-year floodplains.

“Any time we can figure out how to make our regulations better and our infrastructure more resilient, we want to do it,” said county engineer John Blount. “We don’t want to be permitting houses that would flood. It’s not good for the county. It’s not good for people that are in the houses. You shouldn’t be building houses at an elevation you know they’re going to flood.”

[…]

The newly proposed regulations focus on the booming unincorporated region as opposed to areas within Houston city limits. Unincorporated Harris County has added nearly 1 million people since 2000, more than three-quarters of the growth in the county since 2000.

For some areas along the San Jacinto River, Spring Creek and Cypress Creek, the difference between the new and old regulations — 500-year versus 100-year flood levels — could be several feet of elevation required for new homes, which could increase the cost of development by thousands of dollars.

You can see the proposed new regulations here. This is in line with the larger vision County Judge Ed Emmett proposed in September. If this winds up making some new development more expensive, that’s fine. All that’s doing is more accurately pricing in the flood risk. As the story notes, though, the newest construction in the unincorporated county mostly escaped destruction during Harvey. It’s existing development that was the hardest hit, and that’s going to be a much more difficult and expensive problem to solve. And as Jim Blackburn says in the story, the 500 year zone may not be big enough to address this. Still, this is a positive step, and the Court will take up the proposal in early December.

One more thing:

Meanwhile, the proposed regulations would not govern development in the city of Houston. City regulations require new homes built in 100-year floodplains to be elevated one foot above the 100-year flood level — less than the 18 inches that the county currently requires.

Houston Chief Resilience Officer and “flood czar” Steve Costello said the city has not yet made any proposals regarding new floodplains, but has called a meeting in December among city staff to start the discussion. He said the city would consider the county’s changes.

“There’s no guarantee we will formally adopt everything that they have done,” he said. “Obviously we don’t want different criteria at the end of the day.”

I agree that the city should be in line with the county. I hope we have been involved in the discussion over these changes.

Early Congressional odds

Decision Desk provides an early view of the 2018 Congressional election.

The 2018 House Midterm Election is bound to be one of the more interesting in recent memory. With Donald Trump in the White House, infighting on both sides of Congress, and an American public that is bursting at the seams we have a recipe for a perfect political storm. Keep your eye on this page, which houses our forecasts for all 435 congressional districts, and stick with us as we attempt to answer the ultimate questions: who will win majority control of the US House of Representatives?

[…]

The Democratic Party is ahead in generic ballot polls up 7.1% in our average. They hold an 8.2 percentage point lead in our projection of the election day two-party vote.. We get all of our polling data from Huffington Post Pollster, which you can investigate here.

But, because Democrats are clustered in cities and face harsh gerrymanders, they aren’t expected to win an equivalent share of the seats in Congress. What does electoral geography tell us about the actual outcome?

Democrats earn a median of 218 seats in our simulations of the 2018 midterms. This may differ from the strict predictions below because of the larger number of Lean Republican seats than Lean Democratic seats in the current Congress. Effectively we are saying that the below number is an ideal estimate, meant to give you context as to which seats are competitive, but that we expect Democrats to overperform expectations based on the assessment of our error in past predictions.

See here for ratings of individual races, and here for an explanation of the methodology. Note that latter entry is from August, when Dems had about a four percent lead in the generic Congressional ballot, and the model predicted a gain of nine seats, well below the amount needed to retake the majority. Things have improved considerably for them since then, and it shows up in the probabilistic model for each district. Farther down in the original link above is a table highlighting the relevant data and odds of a D victory in each district. I’ve cut out the relevant info for Texas. Feast your eyes:

District Dem 2016/14 (%) Clinton (%) Forecast Dem 2018 (%) Dem Win Prob.
TX-02 37.3 45.1 49.4 45.8
TX-03 36.1 42.6 46.9 29.6
TX-06 40.1 43.6 44.9 15.0
TX-07 43.8 50.7 49.6 46.3
TX-10 40.1 45.2 45.6 18.6
TX-14 38.1 39.8 42.4 6.1
TX-17 36.7 40.8 42.2 5.7
TX-21 39 44.7 49.0 43.4
TX-22 40.5 45.9 46.0 20.9
TX-23 49.3 51.8 52.4 69.2
TX-24 41.2 46.7 46.7 24.9
TX-25 39.3 42.2 43.9 11.0
TX-27 38.3 37.8 41.6 4.5
TX-31 38.5 43.3 44.0 11.3
TX-32 36.4 51.0 46.4 23.1
TX-36 22.5 25.9 29.6 1.0

Kind of amazing, isn’t it? One Dem takeover favored, three tossups, and four more seats for which the odds are around one in four. That was before the Joe Barton nude photos scandal, and who knows what effect that could have. CD02 is rated much more highly as a pickup opportunity than CD32, likely due to Ted Poe’s retirement. As the authors take pains to note, this kind of forecast provides a range of outcomes, and some amount of error is to be expected. Such errors are likely to go exclusively in one direction, and things can change quickly. We’ll need to keep an eye on this going forward – I expect there will be updates about once a quarter – but if there’s a main takeaway, it’s that we really need good candidates in every race. We have them in most districts, but there are a few that could still use an upgrade. There’s a ton of opportunity here, we need to be in a position to grab it.

You’ve never seen Smokey Joe quite like this before

Oh my bleeping God.

Rep. Joe Barton

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, released a statement on Wednesday apologizing for a graphic nude photo of him that circulated on social media earlier this week.

“While separated from my second wife, prior to the divorce, I had sexual relationships with other mature adult women,” he said. “Each was consensual. Those relationships have ended. I am sorry I did not use better judgment during those days. I am sorry that I let my constituents down.”

It is still unclear how the photo got onto social media, who put it there, or whether its posting would constitute revenge porn, which is illegal under Texas law.

Barton, who announced his re-election bid earlier this month, is navigating in a political environment charged with emerging stories of sexual misbehavior in politics, in business and in the media. The photo, which appeared on an anonymous Twitter account, set off speculation within Texas GOP circles about his political future.

In a phone interview with The Texas Tribune on Tuesday, Barton said he was deliberating that.

“You’re as aware of what was posted as I am,” he said. “I am talking to a number of people, all of whom I have faith in and am deciding how to respond, quite frankly.”

A spokeswoman for Barton said Wednesday that he had no plans to resign and had filed for re-election.

If for some reason you have to know more about this, there’s a censored image at Juanita‘s place. I warn you, censored or not, you will never be able to un-see it.

There’s an infinite number of jokes waiting to be made about this, and Barton will hear all of them for the rest of his life. That said, I don’t believe anyone should be shamed simply for having had nude photos taken of themselves or for sharing them in a consensual manner. That first story clearly paints Barton as a victim. This followup story muddies the water a little.

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, who apologized Wednesday for a lewd photo of him that circulated on the Internet, told a woman to whom he had sent sexually explicit photos, videos and messages that he would report her to the Capitol Police if she exposed his behavior, according to a recording reviewed by The Washington Post.

The woman spoke to The Post after the lewd photo was published Tuesday by an anonymous Twitter account. She shared a secretly recorded phone conversation she had with Barton in 2015 in which he warned her against using the explicit materials “in a way that would negatively affect my career.”

The woman described encounters and contact spanning a five-year period that began online after she posted a message on Barton’s Facebook page in 2011, leading to the sexually explicit exchanges and ultimately a pair of physical sexual encounters in Washington and Texas. Over time, she said, she became aware of and corresponded with multiple other women who engaged in relationships with Barton, who represents a suburban Dallas district and is one of the most senior Republicans in the House.

The woman, who is not married, spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her privacy.

In the 2015 phone call, Barton confronted the woman over her communications with the other women, including her decision to share explicit materials he had sent. In that context, he mentioned the Capitol Police, a comment the woman interpreted as an attempt to intimidate her.

“I want your word that this ends,” he said, according to the recording, adding: “I will be completely straight with you. I am ready if I have to, I don’t want to, but I should take all this crap to the Capitol Hill Police and have them launch an investigation. And if I do that, that hurts me potentially big time.”

“Why would you even say that to me?” the woman responded. “… The Capitol Hill police? And what would you tell them, sir?”

Said Barton: “I would tell them that I had a three-year undercover relationship with you over the Internet that was heavily sexual and that I had met you twice while married and had sex with you on two different occasions and that I exchanged inappropriate photographs and videos with you that I wouldn’t like to be seen made public, that you still apparently had all of those and were in position to use them in a way that would negatively affect my career. That’s the truth.”

In a statement late Wednesday, Barton said a transcript of the recording provided by The Post may be “evidence” of a “potential crime against me.”

He said that he received word Wednesday that the Capitol Police are opening an inquiry. While there is no federal law prohibiting the disclosure of intimate photos of adults without consent, the Dallas Morning News on Wednesday reported that the Twitter photo of Barton could violate a 2015 Texas law banning so-called “revenge porn,” which is the portrayal of another person’s intimate body parts and distributing the images without consent.

“This woman admitted that we had a consensual relationship,” Barton said. “When I ended that relationship, she threatened to publicly share my private photographs and intimate correspondence in retaliation. As the transcript reflects, I offered to take the matter to the Capitol Hill Police to open an investigation. Today, the Capitol Police reached out to me and offered to launch an investigation and I have accepted. Because of the pending investigation, we will have no further comment.”

The woman said she never had any intention to use the materials to retaliate against Barton.

At this point, I’m going to wait and see what if anything else comes out about this. Barton is a terrible Congressman, but so far it doesn’t look like he’s done anything wrong. It’s embarrassing, sure, but it’s embarrassing because the photos were released without Barton’s knowledge or consent. That’s wrong when it happens to anyone, including Joe Barton.

Last word, from the first story:

Jana Lynne Sanchez, a Democrat running for Barton’s seat, said in a statement that there was a “larger issue” than Barton’s personal life at play.

“Texans, just like all American people, are tired of poor behavior of elected officials distracting us from the real issues affecting us – the unbearable cost of healthcare, the poor and sliding quality of public education and the lack of good jobs for our high school graduates,” Sanchez said. “No matter who the Republican nominee is, I look forward to a civil and respectful campaign on the issues – not one sullied by personal attacks.”

Amen to that. You can learn more about Jana Lynne Sanchez here. The DMN, the Current, RG Ratcliffe, and Daily Kos have more.